I stayed home with my sick kid today and as my co-instructor also had a sick kid, Forest Kindie was canceled today for the first time.
As Christian is now so fond of saying, his eyes are all gummed up. He has pink eye, but he doesn’t.
From what I understand, bacterial conjunctivitis is the pink eye we all know and fear: massively itchy pink eyes, very contagious, and no other symptoms. It is commonly treated with antibiotic eye drops.
Christian has a viral version; which in layperson’s language, he has a cold or a flu that is manifesting through his eyes and other parts of his body (fever at night, cancre sores at back of throat, painful barking cough). Antibiotics are of no help here. But like most colds and flus, it should be short-lived, and indeed, Christian’s eyes were gummed shut only yesterday morning. Today they’ve had a bit of goop in the inner corner once or twice. The whites of his eyes are not red, though he did have red puffy circles around his eyes yesterday, almost like he’d been crying or suffering from allergies. He IS contagious as long as his eyes are red and oozing, which is why the doctor thought he might be contagious today, and why I called in sick, but I think he is mostly now recovering.
The timeline went like this:
Sunday – he appeared energetic and happy, with a little bit of a drippy nose in just one nostril
Sunday night – he started a barking cough and woke up crying several times through the night.
Monday – Chad was also not feeling well (stinging eyes, sensitivity to the light, and general malaise) so he called in sick and I went to forest kindergarten by myself (*sad*). During the day Christian hardly seemed sick, although he was still coughing.
Monday night – Christian woke repeatedly crying again. And spiked a fever in the middle of the night that was gone by morning.
Tuesday morning – Christian woke with his eyes fused shut by goop. I canceled all my plans and made an appointment with Dr. Bob Sears in San Clemente.
Chad and I went back-and-forth just a little bit, because it would have been easier and cheaper to run into the urgent care at bottom of our street. HOWEVER, I felt confident that Christian would be prescribed antibiotics WHETHER OR NOT they were going to be useful (I believe that antibiotics are over prescribed and over-used) If it was pink eye, I wanted it diagnosed properly by a pediatrician who was loathe to over-prescribe meds, so in the end we coughed up the $60 for sick visit and went in. (Dr. Bob is out-of-network, and makes you file all your own insurance claims. We love him, but are grateful to only have to see him once a year…)
Wednesday – Christian would not appear sick to most people. His energy and mood were good; we did a bunch of spring planting/transplanting and porch cleaning – he even went down and rode his balance bike for a while.
I anticipate an excellent deep night of sleep. And hope for a bright-eyed boy in the morning.