It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Strep Throat Boy!

See, this whole blogging-by-email thing is totally working out. Three posts in nearly as many days!

Last night Denis headed out for happy hour after work, and given my loathe of cooking (unless it’s breakfast food), I opted to take the kids out to dinner and then enjoy a quiet evening at home. The kids chose Cracker Barrel, which wouldn’t have necessarily been MY choice, but it’s what they wanted. We sat down, ordered, and CootieBoy began to complain about his throat hurting. The food came and after taking one single bite, he burst into tears.

"I can’t eat it, Mama! My throat hurts too bad!"

I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight app (best app on the planet – I use it ALL THE TIME). One quick shine into his mouth and yep, there was definitely something going on.

Since our food had only just arrived, he sat patiently while CootieGirl and I wolfed down our food. I ordered a large glass of chocolate milk for him, figuring the creamy milk would soothe his throat enough for him to eat a least a little bit. That placebo worked, and he managed to eat half the burger and a couple of french fries.

As we finished the meal, I hopped back on my phone to open up our local hospital’s webpage, which features a system that shows the wait times for all emergency and urgent care locations in its network. The one a couple miles from the restaurant showed only a 15 minute wait. We quickly paid the bill and drove over to the urgent care.

CB did a great job answering the doctor’s questions, and it took only 30 minutes to check in, get diagnosed, get the prescription and head out the door. Talk about excellent service!

Prescription in hand, we immediately drove over to the pharmacy to get the meds. Upon arriving home, I expected a fight from CB about taking the medicine, but realized that doctor had made a GENIUS move while we were at urgent care. When we were finishing up, the doctor said, "You can get your medicine one of two ways. You can either get a shot with a really big needle, or you can just take the liquid medicine. Which do you want?"

Genius.

CB, who normally kicks and screams when medicine is required, stood docile while I measured out his dose of amoxicillin, and drank it without a single hesitation. Same thing this morning. I love Doctor Mike!

The good news is that CB has not been contagious. Apparently when a fever presents itself at the onset of strep, that’s when it is contagious. To our knowledge, he never had a fever this week. Now that he is on antibiotics, if he develops a fever in the next couple of days, the antibiotic will have already begun eradicating the infection, and he will not be contagious even if a fever eventually crops up. He was very pleased to hear that since he has a class field trip today. I was also pleased to hear it since I love up on the kids so much with hugs and kisses all the time. I don’t have time to get strep throat.

So in any event, it was an eventful night last night – we didn’t get home until 9 p.m. So much for a relaxing evening!