Sick Day

Yesterday was the day every parent dreads – my child was sick.  As a parent, you feel terrible for your child, but as an employee this is particularly problematic because I am expected to be at my office no matter what.

It all started as a normal day, I got the girls ready for “school” and we headed out the door.  When I was getting Greenleigh ready, I noticed a bump on her head, but my kid plays hard so this isn’t entirely out of the ordinary.  I figured I would monitor the situation and make an appointment with the pediatrician if it didn’t heal or got worse.  But I never really thought it would get to that point.  After all, it never had before.  Plus, who would have guessed that this kid was sick and couldn’t go to school:

We arrived at daycare and Greenleigh gave me her back pack and pranced into her classroom.  Happy as a clam.  I told her to have a good day and that was that.  I then took Hazeline back to the infant room.  I had been in the infant room for all of 30 seconds when the the director of the daycare then came flying through the door.  The conversation went a little something like this:

Director: Greenleigh’s head.  Did you see it?

Me: Well yes, it must have happened when she fell while playing on Saturday at a friends house.  You know the kid plays hard, it must just be —

Director: Ringworm.

Feel itchy right now?  I did when they told me.  Want to wash your hands?  Feel the need to do load of laundry, just in case?  I totally understand.  I’ll wait.

From the look on my face, they knew right away that I had no idea.  They then proceeded to explain how terribly contagious it is and I could hear them separating Greenleigh from the rest of her class.  I immediately looked for hand sanitizer and contemplated my options for who was  going to take care of my highly contagious child for the day.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to take care of her?  She is after all, adorably contagious.

Luckily, the teacher Greenleigh had in the one year old room, Ya-Ya, had quit several months before and gave me her number for situations such as these.  I frantically dialed her number, praying she would pick up and just be dying to take care of my highly contagious child.  She cheerfully answered the phone.  Thank God.  I spit out several phrases that probably didn’t make much sense about Greenleigh, ringworm, being unable to go to school, and asking begging her to watch her for the day.  Her answer, “No problem.” God bless her.

I scooped Greenleigh up from her classroom and she immediately started to panic.  Not because we were leaving, but because we were leaving the baby at daycare.  I tried to soothe her all the way to the pediatrician’s office to no avail, in between calls to my husband, my office, and YaYa.

We then entered the chaos of the pediatrician’s office.  The waiting room was packed.  Kids running everywhere.  I had no time to call ahead so we were walk-ins.  I quickly agreed to see the first doctor available, which still meant an hour and a half wait.  When we finally got to see the doctor, he asked “So why are we here today?”  I thought to myself, “Good, he didn’t see it either.”  I explained the situation, he wrote a prescription for some cream, and we were good to go.  Oh wait, but that cream, it needs to be applied twice a day for 2 weeks.  Can’t wait to have to tackle her to do that.  Staying still is not Greenleigh’s forte.

The pharmacy was in a state of pandemonium when we arrived.  You see, even though we are no longer in the direct path of Hurricane Irene, everyone still seems pretty certain it is going to hit us.  Every person in the county was filling every prescription they had at that pharmacy.  Thankfully at this point YaYa met us and I was able to hand Greenleigh off to her while I waited for the prescription.

An hour later I was finally at my office.  As I ate lunch in the break room, I explained what had happened to my co-workers.  I had stopped to pick up some food on the way in and was sharing my nachos with the group.  Upon hearing the news, one of my co-workers promptly picked up his chair and moved it further away from where I was sitting.   He then set strict rules on my touching the chips and double dipping.  Fair enough.

I just hope the next ring Greenleigh gets has a diamond and is post medical school graduation.