Edward was throwing up in the night, and first of all I would like to say how lovely it is to be at the stage of life where that is something I generally find out about in the morning, rather than having to clean barf out of carpeting and out from between crib railings and out of a child’s hair at 2:00 in the morning. Barf laundry is some of the worst laundry.
But illness is still concerning. The symptoms don’t make me worry about Covid-19, but I do wonder how he would have caught ANY illness considering he’s been nowhere and seen no one. A quick look at my CONTACT CALENDAR tells me that our most recent contact was the guy who came to give an estimate on a replacement water heater; he was here for several minutes on Friday, but he wore a mask and Paul reported that the worker pointedly didn’t touch anything, waited for Paul to open the basement door and so forth. Paul went into his office the day before that, but saw almost no one, and everyone is wearing masks and trying to keep it at one person per room, and his office has one of those machines that atomizes (is that the science verb I want here?) disinfectant and sprays it nightly, after the cleaners go through and do the newly-intensive pandemic cleaning. And none of the rest of us have been sick, and we can’t think of anything Edward ate that none of the rest of us ate, so I feel like we’re gradually ruling out food poisoning and stomach viruses, or at least putting them lower on the suspicion list at this point.
Since the symptoms are digestive, and since so far only Edward has them, that makes me suspect something to do with his Crohn’s disease. I further suspect that this is because of relative inactivity: he used to walk to and from school each day, plus walk around the school building at points throughout the day, plus have gym class—and now he’s mostly in a nest on the couch with a book or his phone. He is the Indoors Type, and that is a fine and worthy type to be, we don’t all have to be hearty and outdoorsy and covered in ticks/sunburn—but physical activity seems particularly useful for digestive health, and so I think I am going to have to work harder to make sure he is doing more of it. He can do indoorsy versions, such as Dance Dance Revolution or whatever.
In the meantime, I am glad we keep cans of ginger ale and Coke on hand for just this sort of sudden issue (I’ve found the little bottles eventually lose fizz if they sit too long before being needed, but the cans don’t seem to), and that we have saltines and applesauce, and we have bread for toast. He is…well, he is in a nest on the couch, but when he feels a little better we will start wheeling him out into the sunshine, or whatever used to be done with Edwardian invalids. (That was an unintentional play on words with his name. I searched lightly online to see why I associate the Edwardian period with invalids being pale and covered in blankets and reading books on the couch and being wheeled into the sunshine, and I still don’t know. Perhaps it is just a time period when the word “invalid” was being used. Or perhaps there was a pandemic near that time that left many people chronically ill.)
My 10-to daughter had a similar thing- complained of headache and stomach ache for 12 hrs, puked, and then had a fever off and on for three days. Now she’s fine. We have been strictly quarantining other than my husband who works at a hospital where everyone is in PPE all day. Nobody else has been sick and it’s been about 2 weeks. Could it have been just a normal bug that he brought home from work?
I hope he’s feeling better soon.
The Secret Garden was published in 1911. That could be enough to form an association if you read that book over and over again in childhood like I did. They practically cure that boy with sunshine.
The doctor at the pain clinic suggested some of North’s new symptoms (muscle weakness and dizziness) may come from lack of physical activity while home for months.
Agree with Secret Garden, and also maybe Heidi?
This is one of the issues that I am cranky about. It seems one can no longer simply be sick in the “before” way. Whether your style was quiet resignation or wallowing, no judgement. Now every symptom of every garden variety bug must be checked against the list of COVID-19 symptoms. Have you studied that list? Can you think of a symptom that isn’t on that list? So next you check your contact list, and then finally, maybe you are free to resume your personal misery. Cranky, I tell you, cranky.
Hope Edward feels better, and that it isn’t something that sweeps through the whole crew.
💜
Sending love. Does Edward have any interest in Pokemon Go? It has been very useful at getting my son out of the house and walking around.
Theres a new game out that is sort of similar to Pokemon Go and it’s based on Jurassic World. You use a virtual drone to collect DNA samples of various dinosaurs and create, train, and battle with them. It’s pretty fun!
Poor Edward. I hope he recovers very soon.
(The Spanish influenza was during the Edwardian era, I believe?)
Edwardian period was from 1901-1910 (also called the Gilded age here in America), so a little early for the Spanish influenza. I am surprised it is such a short time frame.
It’s short because his Mama lived to such a great old age! I’m guessing that the ‘Charlesian’ period (or whatever we’ll call it) will be similarly short.
Oh! The light, it shines. Maybe consumption is the association then.
Oh dear, I’m so sorry to hear. I hope he’ll feel better soon.
We have strictly been quarantining, but one day my daughter woke with a terrible sore throat. I tried the usual things – gargling with salt water, tylenol, etc, but after three days of increasing misery decided she needed to be seen. I kept saying “How could you be sick? You have seen no one that doesn’t live in this house!”
It turned out to be an allergy related throat infection (sniffing because of allergies went down her throat and irritated her) that was easily cleared up by antibiotics.
Here’s what has caused my insomnia:
After I cheerfully mentioned that they probably had very little infectious diseases (outside of COVID 19) or cases of lice because we are all social distancing, the pediatrician turned to me and gravely said, “Here’s the thing. We are sanitizing and bleaching and diminishing exposure. Young kids especially are going to have no immune systems at all – kind of like when you send a baby or toddler to daycare for the first time. Additionally, I worry over sanitizing will create super bugs that no one can fight off.”
I was so taken aback I didn’t ask any follow up questions, but I frequently lay away at night thinking about super bugs.
The hygiene hypothesis is a very real thing!
Thank you, doctor. This is exactly what I don’t need right now: more things to worry about that I can’t do anything about. GREAT! PERFECT! FAB!!
Here’s to hoping he’s better soon! I had food delivered last night for Father’s Day and it unsettled my stomach. It made me wish I had coke though which usually makes me feel better. Is this a thing – carbonated beverages helping with stomach problems? I always thought maybe there’s so much bad stuff in coke it just kills everything in your tummy…
You know when you have a baby and all of the baby books talk about important milestones? I feel like there should be a similar list of milestones for older kids – the kind that are going to make your life as a parent so much easier: can get self into and out of car seat, no longer needs a car seat at all, can dress self, can bathe self, can shower and actually get clean, can entertain self for reasonable periods of time, barfs and doesn’t need help or clean up, can make own lunches, can arrange own friend get togethers, can drive self, these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head but there are lots more. So many just awesome milestones!
‘can blow own nose’ was a huge one for me. Oh and ‘can cut own finger/toe nails’
Poor kid, hope he’s feeling better soon.
Maybe it’s a mild allergy/sensitivity to something he ate/eats? My son is technically not allergic to milk, but will barf if he drinks it. I get an upset stomach from milk as well. However, in his case it’s an issue with the protein as going lactose-free doesn’t help, but in my case it’s because I’m lactose intolerant.
Also… CONFESSION: My daughter was mysteriously barfing nightly as a toddler for about a week before we found that there was mould growing unseen in the lid of her water sippy-cup. I offer this not as a suggestion that your hygiene is as deplorable as ours apparently was, but as an illustration that sometimes it’s something totally unexpected – but not contagious – causing a problem.
Two things:
1. People with wimpy immune systems and/or sensitive guts can get food poisoning from stuff that doesn’t perturb “normal” people. My husband after a particularly ill-fated Panda Express trip: one slightly-unusual/soft bathroom visit. Me: a day of vomiting/almost vomiting, five days of diarrhea (and I’m not even on immunosuppressants! and only have a nasty case of IBS, not Crohn’s!).
2. Food poisoning can be non-uniformly spread in a food; most classically, this happens with salad greens where actually, *that* leaf was from a different area than the other leaves in the plastic clamshell-y thing, but it can also happen through cross-contamination from serving/cutting implements, or just really weird circumstances (like something not being evenly mixed and thus *one pocket* of it is perfect for food poisoning but the rest has enough sugar/salt/acid to fend it off).
There are also food intolerances, but usually those don’t result in vomiting unless the pain/lower-GI problems are bad enough to just make you vomit, which I assume he would be able to differentiate.
Also, some GI bugs are crazy-durable, unlike our current coronavirus. I would like none of them to be crazy-durable, but as long as some of them are, I’m glad it’s not all of them, anyway… (to be honest, I think you’ll enjoy this: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/misery-inducing-norovirus-can-survive-for-months-perhaps-years-in-drinking-water/ )
(I mean, also there are medication side-effects and stuff, but I assume he hasn’t started/stopped anything.)
Good luck!
Treatment in the late 1800 and early 1900 for TB was being outdoors. Those that were well enough to engage in light exercise were recommended to exercise. If they were not well enough to exercise then they would have the patients sit outside. This might be where you are thinking of the Edwardian era sitting outside when sick. The man who came up with this treatment was named Edward ( Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau).