miserable day
7:05 pm. What a long miserable day this has been.
Patches cannot eat because his mouth and throat hurt too badly. I took him to the doctor this morning. The doctor took one look at his throat, didn’t bother to do a strep test and gave me antibiotics. Unfortunately after 12 hours the antibiotics have had zero effect and Patches has developed blister like sores in his mouth. Some asking around netted me the information that Utah is currently suffering an outbreak of Hand Foot and Mouth disease. HFM is a virus which can’t be treated, it can only be endured, and it lasts for about a week. This is going to be a long long miserable week. Patches is starvingly hungry and can’t eat. He doesn’t even want to drink because his mouth hurts. So we have hunger cranky along with pain cranky. Talking hurts, so he can’t tell me what he wants. On top of all that every time he falls asleep he swallows and the pain wakes him back up. So we have tired cranky as well.
Patches hates this. He is very angry with me because I have failed to fix it already. He also desparately wants me to comfort him. He feels the same way about his blanket which he alternately clutches and throws across the room. Advil and Tylenol seem to only be of minimal help. Distraction seems to be the best medecine available to us, so it has been a day of movies.
To add to the joy of today, all the minutes I’ve spent not taking care of Patches have been spent down in my office wading through piles of bills, reciepts, and quarterly reports. We’ve gone back to more money going out than coming in. I knew we would until the release of the next book, but I still don’t like it.
Now I need to completely sanitize myself and make dinner for all the other kids without playing the part of Typhoid Mary. If other kids get this monster I’ll spend the rest of the summer in misery.