Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Called It

Sunday afternoon, Olivia complained that her shoulders hurt. Later that evening, as she was eating her oatmeal, she told me the raisins the in the oatmeal were hurting her teeth.

I gave her a dose of ibuprofen before bed to stave off the aches and hoped for the best.

The next morning when I woke her up, she told me that her knees hurt. I kissed her forehead and noted no unusual warmth but still took her down to the kitchen to take her temperature. The thermometer stopped at a cool 98.1. Still, I gave her another dose of ibuprofen because of her achiness.

I then told Tom, “I’m calling it, she’s presick.”

He quoted the thermometer and basically told me I was worrying over nothing, that she probably hurt from playing too hard yesterday.

I replied, “Okay, but I’m still saying she’ll be sick by tomorrow at the latest.”

He didn’t roll his eyes but he might as well have.

We all went about our morning routines.

I kept my phone with me all day at work anticipating a call from the school asked that someone go pick up a sick Liv. That call didn’t come and so I went home at the usual time.

The second I walked in the door, I heard Tom and Livie in the living room. I couldn’t understand their mutterings so I went to find them. They were both cuddled under blankets and Tom looked up at me and said, “I think you’re going to want to take her to Urgent Care.”

He’d taken her temperature twenty minutes before I got home. It was 102.5 degrees. Firmly in the fever category. Firmly in the SICK category, if you will. And why yes, I will, thank you very much.

So I carried a sick Liv to the car, calling up to Alyssa that I was taking her sister to Urgent Care. She called back, asking if I would drop her off at Gram’s on the way. Tom started to tell her no when I asked, “Why not?” I mean, it’s on the way and really not a big deal.

And away we went.

We spent over an hour in the outer waiting room at Urgent Care. At one point, the only other people waiting was a mom and her two boys along with me and Olivia. The mom and her ruffigans had come in after we did but were called back first.

At that point, I did something I hardly ever do. I spoke up. I got up and asked the receptionist if it was weird that another patient had been called back before we had when we’d arrived first. She looked confused then went and checked the charts. She came back and reassured me, “You’re next!”

“Yeah,” I said, “That’s because we’re the last ones waiting.”

Snarky? Maybe, but damn it, I wondered if the mom with the two boys had been called back because her kids were being way more obnoxious than my kid.

The receptionist then tried to explain, “Well, sometimes it just depends on what you’re been seen for.”

Whatever.

We were finally called back, O was promptly diagnosed with strep and off we went to Walmart with a prescription for amoxicillin.

On the way to Walmart, though, we made a couple of stops. See, even with the strep and the achiness that goes along with it, Olivia was starving. During our endless wait at Urgent Care she asked constantly to stop at McD’s for a happy meal and then at Wendy’s for a frosty.

The kid has strep, who was I to tell her no? Okay, so yes, I could have but I figured she could eat while we waited for her medicine to be ready.

We got to Walmart, I parked near a cart return and I put the blanket we keep in the car down so she could sit in the back of the cart and eat her burger, fries and frosty in relative comfort while we waited for the ever-busy pharmacy at Walmart to do their job.

Twenty minutes later, my phone rang. It was a pharmacy tech, they were out of amoxicillin. I could come back to the pharmacy to get her prescription to take to another pharmacy. They were ever so sorry for the inconvenience and didn’t want me to have to wait any longer with a sick child.

Big sigh. Okay then. We put the twenty dollars or so worth of merchandise we were going to buy on a shelf near the pharmacy, got our slip back and headed to Meijer.

Thankfully, twenty minutes was just enough time for Olivia to finish her happy meal and her frosty.

At Meijer, there was no wait and, get this, no cost for the antibiotic. Amoxicillin is always free at Meijer. Can you even believe this? Holy crap, why have I been wasting so much freaking time and money at Walmart all these damned years?

We were in and out of there in ten minutes, medicine in hand and on our way to Gram’s to get Lyss.

We pulled into our garage at 8:35pm.

It was a long freaking day and there were a lot of words to say, “I called it! I knew she was sick.”

Yes, I wish she weren’t but sometimes it’s nice to say I told you so. Because, yeah, I totally did.

Mommy instinct for the win. The fact that she’s sick sucks but almost nine years into mothering Livie, I almost have this thing down.

1 comment:

Julie said...

Yeah, Meijer pharmacy offers a lot of their prescriptions at no-cost. I always picked mine up there. Now our insurance mails me all of my prescriptions for free! YAY!!

I hope she feels better soon!