welcome to the infirmary

I’m such a wimp when it comes to illness.  This cold has been lingering for about nine days now, and I’ve been excusing my hacking cough to patients with, “Oh, you know, kid’s in daycare, so it’s always something.”  (Sure, blame the baby, easy target.)  Unfortunately, it seems like Aurelia has now caught said bug from me rather than the other way around, as I hear her now coughing in her sleep through the walls of her bedroom/guestroom/study (truly one day she’ll have her own room and it’s going to be baller).  Mom/responsible med student fail.

And here are two gems from the weekend:

Though on the mend, I was congested to the point of tears on Saturday night (wimp, I know), practically begging John to let me take Robitussin DM.  He looked at me accusingly, “I won’t tell you what to do with your own body, but it’s pregnancy category C; we don’t know the risks to the fetus.”  (Pregnancy categories of a drug serve as assessments of risk toward the fetus.  Simplified, “A” is the safest; “D” and “X” are bad and really bad, respectively.  “C” means that there is some evidence of potential harm to fetuses in animal studies but there is not concrete evidence in humans.)  I retorted, my eyes literally brimming with tears, “Jesus!  Stool softeners are category C.  We don’t do drug studies on pregnant women!  Let me have my drugs!!!”  He might have then texted a maternal-fetal medicine doc who, I’m sure, at this point is really regretting giving us her number, and probably knowing us at all.

The next day, in an effort to keep Aurelia content and not crying to the supersonic level so as to let my darling husband sleep (he’s on nights) while cleaning up a mild mess, I let my daughter play with the bottle with the fun purple liquid.  They make child-safety caps for a reason.  I can’t open them, she shouldn’t be able to either.  I was rinsing a diaper in the bathroom; she was in the next room.  I was gone maybe 30 seconds and things were too quiet.  When I tentatively peered through the doorway, she looked up at me proudly beaming, covered in sticky grape-flavored Motrin, the previously mostly full bottle now marinating our once white quilt overlying the guest bed.  Aurelia was contently slapping her hands into the purple pools, then sucking her fingers satisfyingly.  This, this is why we have children’s rather than infant’s Motrin (the latter of which is of a higher drug concentration) in the house, and why we absolutely do not have children’s Tylenol except in cases of emergency (just listen to This American Life “Use Only as Directed”).

I’m hoping if I give her Motrin before leaving tomorrow I’ll have until 2pm before I get a call from daycare.  Thanks to some god of small things that it’s January and not February, and if you could please keep my babe healthy during my sub-I, I will try not to have a heart attack at age 30.

No cute new pictures today–still in the adjustment phase of being back in clinic.  Seriously, thanks to so many of you for your kind notes and encouragement recently, and I apologize for my perpetual delay in response.  They’ve meant so much to me, and I don’t want to be inconsiderate or seem ungrateful.  So for now a generalized “thanks” with a hopefully more specific one to follow…

Hope you are all staying healthy throughout this mercurial weather pattern.