Laziness Wins!

The other week when Micah had bronchitis, I realized that it is far easier to lay in bed in the morning than it is to actually get up, pack his lunch, get him dressed, and shove him out the door. That's kind of why I kept him home on Friday. I was just too lazy to get up that morning and get him ready for school. But in my defense, his croupy cough came back and I know from experience it's better to get a kid to a doctor on Friday and have them say, "there's nothing wrong with your kid. Stop being a worrywart," than it is for you to have to make an emergency trip to the ER on Sunday afternoon because you should have gone to the doctor's office on Friday. And didn't because you didn't want to be a worrywart.

There is rarely a win in parenting situations like this.

So because I was concerned about his croupy cough, and it was Friday, I chose to sleep in. Plus, the school called a few days earlier and said that he was having acid reflux and I should probably address that with a doctor because it can affect his ears what with the whole ear, nose, and throat all connected the way they are. And if his ears are affected, it'll affect his learning to talk even more than he's already affected.

There is so much to think about with kids like these, you know? Nothing is ever straight forward.

Turns out, Micah had a white coating on the back of his throat, and when he put his tongue out to say, "Aaaaahhhhhh!" I saw that his tongue was coated in a weird white film as well. The doctor said, "what has he eaten today?," but my answer of "eggs and toast" didn't satisfy her. She looked again, and showed me, too. It was definitely white back in there. Her educated guess was thrush, but she did a strep test to be sure it wasn't that also.

The strep test? No. Micah was not very tolerant of that. He was far more tolerant than I thought he would be, and I was able to hold him myself by backing into a corner to brace myself and holding him in a bear hug with his arms pinned to his side, but he most certainly didn't like it. Who does, really? The test was negative, which is very good.

So it turns out that one can get thrush from taking antibiotics and steroids at the same time, like Micah did for his bronchitis the other week. Also turns out that thrush can cause symptoms very much like reflux, so that's a win, too. He probably doesn't have actual acid reflux.

The bad news is that thrush is highly contagious. Micah has had chapped lips this week and had those nasty flakes hanging off his wee chapped lips, and I've been picking at them to try to make him look less fuzzy. At the doctor's office I realized that those weren't dry lip flakes but instead a weird build-up of the yeasty infection growing out of his mouth and clinging to his lips. (Yeh, he's got a bad case. I'm the worst mom in the history of ever.) I have not been washing my hands after picking at those flakes because I had no idea they were diseased little pieces just waiting to infect the masses.

There is rarely a win in parenting situations like this.