Precious got the flu last week. She started getting sick on Sunday night and missed the whole week of school. I work for a wonderful employer and get 5 days of family-related leave a year. Only problem is, that it goes pretty fast between the number of appointments Precious has, along with the fact that I have two other children. We’re pretty lucky and none of us gest sick that often. I only took three days of sick leave for myself all last year. I’ve never had to leave work early to pick up the older two kids from school and I only missed two hours once for a dentist’s appointment.
Monday morning, Precious was really sick and couldn’t go anywhere. I’m in month 10 of our fiscal year at work, so I’ve used up all my family-related leave. I used a day of vacation and stayed at home with her. On Tuesday, my mom came in the morning, and DH came home early that afternoon. Wednesday, Mom came in the morning and I came home at 12:30. Thursday, we figued that Precious had to be getting better and we sent her to school in the morning. The school called shortly after 1 and asked us to come and pick her up. My mom got her and Precious ended up napping again that afternoon. Friday was the same thing, with Mom coming in the morning and DH leaving work early. Precious was napping every day for a couple of hours, sleeping all night, and taking it pretty easy.
Aside from the obvious inconveniences of having a sick kid, I was getting pretty worried. Precious had a pretty severe cough. She’s always had more than her fair share of ear infections, runny noses and coughs, but this was was really persistent and lasted a long time. Thursday afternoon, my mom called me to give me the scoop on my daughter and she made it seem pretty bad. I had trouble focussing as I was worried about my little girl and imagined I’d need to see if we could get into the pediatrician the next morning. I was pretty worried that we might end up in the hospital with her. Luckily, it didn’t turn out that way. By Friday morning, it was obvious that Precious was getting better and today she is going around singing, and talking to herself and playing. She’s in a Wii golf tournament right now with her brother and sister and my dad.
I don’t know how I would cope if Precious was sick all the time. The worry just for that one afternoonwas draining, and adjusting my work schedule and missing work was tough. I’m sure there is no way I would be working full time if Precious had medical issues.
How do you do it when your child is sick?