Beds, Bugs, and Bodily Fluids

Thursday today; this should be my long day "off", the one day in the week when both girls are elsewhere for at least five hours. I already knew that wasn't going to happen; preschool have an all day outing which wasn't really great for Little Fish so today was a staying at home day.

Mog was a bit quiet this morning; nothing specific enough to keep her home from school but "not quite right" enough to keep me close to the phone. A worry which turned out to be justified as the call from school came; no fever, nothing specific, just quietly unhappy and uncomfortable.

So home she came, and onto her bed, where she's been ever since - not asleep, not fitting, not hot, just quiet, unresponsive, and copious quantities of foul smelling poo her only visible symptom. Not that helpful a symptom either; she's on Movicol so it happens fairly regularly.

I'd write it off to Movicol entirely if it weren't for the fact that as I cleaned up her third explosion of the afternoon I head the ominous phrase "I need a towel NOW" from Little Fish. Stupidly I ignored her plea, being up to the elbows in the drippy brown stuff, and walked back into the sitting room to find a nice neat tidal wave of vomit lapping at my toes.

I grab a towel from the bathroom and use it to mop the flood, feeling rather spectacularly bad for having ignored the "Oh please no water"s which had been shouted as I bolused her midday feed into her. Oops. A second towel reaches Little Fish just in time for her to catch the next retch herself, saving her brace for the moment at least.

Back to Mog who has taken advantage of her nappy free state to wee all over the bed.

Back to Little Fish who is now a fetching shade of puce, sweat pouring from her forehead. When the fever strip says 39, the tympanic thermometer says 38, and the under arm one says 36c, what do you do? I split the difference, give the paracetamol, which is promptly retched back, thankfully the orange version not the strawberry which might otherwise give false child-vomiting-fresh-blood-this-time concerns. I don't care about the invasiveness, I want the rectal version please.

Mop her fevered brow to the accompaniment of much "I NOT sicky, I NOT I don't like this" and a lesser mutter of "I want peanut butter and pâté and yoghurt in my mouth and apple pudding in my tubie". Suggest this possibly isn't the best plan at this precise moment in time, and grab a tissue to mop up the nose bleed caused by a combination of retching and temper.

Back to Mog to mop up again and try to cover the pressure mark. Chase the wheelchair service in the hope her new FoamKarve might be ready some time before the end of term. Get a standard noncommittal "her name's not on the list and no one is here to talk to you" until I mention the magic two words "Pressure Mark" at which point "can't help you please go away and be patient" turns into "I'll email the boss, I'll contact the company, I'll get them to call you back in the morning".

Realise my mother is arriving shortly to take Mog to Rainbows, but that Mog is in no fit state to get there. Attempt to tidy something beyond straightforwards vomit-mopping, but give up and begin blogging this instead.

Mop more vomit, wipe more poo, cancel our attendance at a proposed picnic tomorrow and pause to be thankful that the potential visitors we had for the Children's Food Festival are not coming down for the weekend.

And then I had a momentary breather, caught up with myself and reverted to the past tense. And then Little Fish started retching again, and a suspicious drip drip drip was heard from Mog's bedroom. And then Little Fish started flapping the towel I had been using to mop the floor.

And then my head exploded.

That is all.

Tia