There's Always One, My Mama Said

Picture by P. Vellozzo -
my little one's self portrait

There's always one child who gets sick more often than the rest, my mother told me this summer. It was my sister for her, with severe asthma all throughout childhood. For me, it's my Sweet Rose, my 2nd daughter.

She's been throwing up since 7:00 pm last night. Every hour except blessedly between 3 and 6 am. I had almost decided it wasn't worth trying to go back to sleep, and in my mind began writing blog posts instead. When that cry, that I'm-about-to-vomit-cry we mamas recognize, didn't come again, I fell asleep for a couple of hours.

This poor baby has had it rough this year. My other two have hardly suffered a sniffle. My Sweet Rose has had repeated urinary tract infections, which of course come along with high fevers and feeling awful for days. She's also the only one who has occasional high fevers with no other symptoms. High fever one day, fine the next. It happened several times this summer, but suddenly she had terrible hives along with it.

Her hives were wretched. Her entire face swelled to the point of one eye being nearly swollen shut. Spots covered her little body and the itching drove us both mad. Benadryl helped the itching, but not the swelling. Fortunately, I had samples of Children's Claritin from a BzzAgent (great site for bloggers or social media junkies, btw -no affiliate program here, it's just a great program) campaign and that helped dramatically. Zyrtec also worked, but she couldn't swallow them well and it wasn't worth torturing her.

My fabulous doctor back in Grand Rapids assumed the hives were just a byproduct of a run-of-the-mill fever. But the hives persisted even when the fever broke. When the fever returned two weeks later, and we were weeks away from an overseas move, it was time to run blood tests.

My little pumpkin, my (then) 5-year-old child, had Mononucleosis AND Hepatitis A on top of yet another urinary tract infection. I was shocked. Everyone scrambled to get vaccinated for Hep A, which is not on Michigan's mandatory list. Well, except me. Who has time when taking care of a sick kid and selling off or donating most of your possessions to move overseas? Plus, I figured there was no possible way I hadn't already been exposed, so either I was immune or just lucky.

We returned to the doc for blood tests just days before boarding the plane, and fortunately her liver function and all the rest were back to decent levels - meaning our doc would let us go! The hives continued until only recently. I can't find Children's Claritin here - the chewables are a mutual favorite for us - she says the chewables taste good and I love that they kept the hives at bay for up to 3 days at a time. Plus, I like the convenience of stashing a few in my purse in case the hives return. They're horrible. The hives, I mean. Seeing her beautiful face transformed into something out of The Elephant Man... Breaks a mama's heart. Watching her suffer from the ceaseless itching... breaks a mama's heart.

Hopefully, this will be a short-lived tummy bug. Hopefully, the other two will stay clear of it. Hopefully she'll be able to eat something today and hopefully we'll both get some sleep tonight. I have a lot of hope. Through it all, I'm intensely grateful that though she may be my "one" who is sick more often than the rest of my troop, overall she's a healthy, happy, amazing girl with a long life ahead of her. And she hasn't thrown up at all since I started writing this.