Pox!

"If you are too smart to pay the doctor, you had better be too smart to get ill."
-African Proverb

My 7 year old son has the Chicken Pox. Yes, that's right. I'm a nurse and my son has the Pox. Fear not, my friends, I'm not one of those anti-vaccine nurses that annoy the fuck out of me. He had the vaccine (both of my children are completely up to date on all of their vaccines and if you'd like to start a debate with me about the link between the MMR vaccine and autism, I'll be happy to tell you exactly why I think you're misinformed) and now he has the Pox.

It's not as bad as it might have been otherwise, I suspect. He feels pretty fine, he's just itchy and he looks awful. We've been sentenced to house arrest since Wednesday - because you can't take a kid with Pox anywhere. Not even to the grocery store.

Today, he looked at me and said, "Mom, can we please just take a drive. I've gotta get out of the house." So, we drove aimlessly for two hours. I do think it did us both good to get out of the house for a bit. We're definitely climbing the walls, and I'd give anything to have a conversation with an adult.

I called his school to see if they had any reported cases, and to ask them to call his little girlfriend's parents to inform them - since he confessed that he kissed her - ON THE MOUTH - when they were on the playground. Now, don't think he was being a noble gent by confessing his lip-lock due to his illness, he confessed out of fear. It was a pretty funny chat.

"Mom, how do you get asthma?" He asked.

"You're born with asthma, usually, babe. Sometimes, people that have lots of allergies have asthma." I told him.

"Can you catch asthma from someone else?" He asked.

"No, you can't."

"Even if you kiss someone, on the mouth?"

"No, you still can't catch asthma."

"I'm so glad, Mom. 'Cause I have a girlfriend now and we kiss all the time - ON THE MOUTH - and she has asthma."

Oh-my-God...so cute. So, I asked all kinds of questions about her. He's totally smitten. Much later, he pulls a wadded up piece of paper out of his pocket and informs me that he has her digits. He spends the next 4 hours asking if he can call her (she's in school, so the answer is "Not until later").

He finally calls her and I hear an unbearably cute, one-sided conversation. I remember my first phone call from a boy, and it was about the same time - 2nd grade. She just called tonight to see how he was feeling. :-) It's just so stinking cute.

His school calls me today to ask if I've taken him to the doctor to confirm the diagnosis. No, I haven't. Do you intend to? No, I do not.

Here's that transcript, with the school's medical assistant:

"Are you saying you have no intention of seeking medical care for your child?"

"My child does not appear acutely ill. Further, I don't feel it necessary to have a doctor confirm what is obviously Chicken Pox ."

"May I ask what your reluctance is in regards to seeking approrpriate medical care for your child?" I felt like she was reading a script.

"Sure. My reluctance is that I'm a registered nurse. As I previously mentioned, my son does not appear to be acutely ill. I do not feel the need to spend $100.00 and 3 hours with a sick child in a doctor's office only to be told that he has the Chicken Pox which is a viral, self-limiting illness. I feel quite well equipped to administer Tylenol, Benadryl AND Calamine Lotion."

"Ma'am, I'm sure you understand the importance of medical care."

"Of course I do. Did you miss the part where I told you what I do for a living? I'm not particularly enthusiastic about taking a child with open wounds on his body into a Petri-Dish of a Pediatrician's office. However, you can rest assured that should his condition change, or should I feel that I am no longer capable of managing his illness, I'll take him to a physician immediately."
"Well, he can't come back to school tomorrow without a doctor's note."

"I have no intention of bringing my child back to school tomorrow, he has Chicken Pox. He's still febrile. That means he's running a fever." I know, I know...I just can't help myself sometimes.

"Well, he can't come back to school period, until you provide a doctor's note."

I didn't call her a bitch until after I hung up the phone. So, I called in a favor. I have a doctor's note now. The note says, "The boy got the vaccine. The boy still got the pox. The boy can go back to school on Monday. - The doctor." Maybe the doctor phrased things a little better, but that's the gist of it. Of course, he will not be going back to school on Monday unless he is healthy enough to do so...but bee-yotch, don't play your power-trippy game with me. :-) YAY!!! I win.

In other news, the time off work has been alternately miserable (boring) and incredibly good for me (creative). I've been writing non-stop the last few days. The story "Tenacity" is roughly 50% fiction and 50% reality. The fictional parts are that my grandmother hasn't actually had a stroke...yet and that I never lived in that small, coal-mining town in the story. I know lots of it seems pretty heavy, but I hope you'll find some humor in it, there are parts that make me laugh out loud. Maybe it's just because I remember some of it so vividly.

I'm working on some other stuff, and for the sake of argument, you can just call it fiction. It should be published here soon enough.