Two tricks that made a bad time better

by Steve

Pneumonia sucks. My little girl is just getting over a case of it, and it sucks. My kids are normally very healthy. But when they do come down with something it's really not so bad. I'm prepared. I'm like a pharmaceutical ninja when it comes to all of your basic aches and pains and fevers. Strep goes around a lot, that's an easy one. The issue of finding someone to stay home with them if they can't go to school is never a problem. It really doesn't matter what kind of gross, runny fluids are coming out of where. I can handle it. But pneumonia... ahhhh! I've been out ninja'd.

It's the coughing. She has to cough all of that, junky mucous up and out of her lungs. And you can hear it in there. Every time she exhales there's this little bubbly gurgle. So, it's not like any cough medicine is going to make the coughing go away. She has to do it.

During the day it's not so bad. I think we're all sort of used to it. But at night, when she lays down, it's a nightmare. As a stay at home dad, I think this is my equivalent of a deadline (that's one of those things that working people have to deal with). Project is due, I'm not into it, dead tired, but it's got to get done. Unfortunately, unending, convulsive, phlegm filled coughing doesn't offer postponements. So I get up.

First I try to get her to sleep sitting up on her own. Sure. Then I pick her up and take her downstairs so that she doesn't wake everyone else. Now pay attention, because this works. I prop up on the couch as many pillows as I can find. and I sleep sitting up. She sleeps on my lap, leaning against my chest, while I hold her upright. I forget where I heard this, but it really does work. She gets a better than average night of sleep. She does.

Until she gets back to sleeping through the night I'm the grumpiest bastard alive. I mean, I don't think I'm grouchy. I'm just reacting to everyone around me who, for some reason, waited for this particular time to do and say the dumbest things that they possibly can. Just to get on my nerves. It might come off as grouchy, but it's not me!

On the first night of the anti-biotic, my daughter stood in the kitchen crying between coughs, for about an hour, loudly, because her medicine tastes so bad. "this is the worst day of my life..." "why are you making me do this..." she was being difficult. Being stern wouldn't work. Bribes of candy and money wouldn't work.

Enter Barry the pharmacist. "Let her melt a Hershey's kiss on her tongue. Don't chew it, just let it melt. then give her the medicine. The taste of chocolate is so strong for kids that she'll barely taste the medicine." Barry added another weapon to our black ninja, child sickness combatting, utility belt thing. All hail Barry the Pharmacist.

I guess I should throw in there that you should make sure that a Hershey's kiss isn't a choking hazard for your child. And that my daughter is doing much better.