Two nights ago, while the wife was at the gym and I was on kid duty (coloring and drawing), my daughter instantly became quiet and start shaking, almost shivering, while whimpering, nearly crying “Dada”.
I freaked out.
I instantly went into First Aid mode (I took a class last year), I began talking to her, making her look at me while her eyes became heavy and started closing while she muttered a few words in-between. She was breathing fine except she was really warm, almost too hot. I’ve never felt so helpless my entire life; a million things were going through my head.
I called our doctor (we have a great pediatrician office that has a 24-hour on call doctor), after a few quick questions, and some checkups, she had a fever and he gave me some instructions on how to soothe her. She was fine after an hour or so, nonetheless still uneasy with rattled nerves. I was told the body could shiver when a fever is rising (nobody warned me about this?) Thankfully it wasn’t a seizure; she doesn’t have any history of it and if it had been she would have been unresponsive and blacked out.
We watched her throughout the night virtually taking turns, with a doctor on-call waiting to see if we should take her to the local hospital.
Next day- she was fine. As if nothing happened - acting normal, playing, talking, asking for stuff she couldn’t reach. Her temperature was hovering around 100, nowhere near the 105 the previous night. We were told if she was acting normal, she should be O.K.
Last night, it happened again, nearly the same routine. Except this time led us to the local hospital where they began performing a bunch of tests on her. There’s nothing more horrible for a parent than having your kid in a hospital, crying, wanting you to protect them, and you can’t. I wished so hard that I could take her place.
Then came the waiting. Waiting for the results of all the tests while feeling like nothing else in the world matters than to see her happy, saying funny things, and playing again.
We found out she has pneumonia and everything is going to be all right (after 10 days of antibiotics and check-ups.) Later, she was back at home playing and talking to the dog. It really is hard to imagine that this was the same kid a few hours ago. Because if it were me, I would be asking for KFC, somebody to rub my feet, and maybe a t-shirt or some kind of award to hang on the wall that says “I survived. Make me cookies.”