We dosed her with medicine for the fever and the pain, and she did okay in the afternoon / evening, though still more fragile than normal. Fever of 102.5 this morning, so we're keeping her home. May take her in to the pediatrician to get antibiotics, assuming it really is an ear infection, although I also kind of hate doing that, since the more she takes them, the more resistant she'll get to them. I think I'll ride it out this morning, see how she's doing, whether the fever breaks on its own. If she seems to be getting worse instead of better, the doctor and antibiotics.
So our plans are all jumbled for the day, but that's okay. It's summer, and everything we're doing can be rescheduled. I'm so glad we started them in school over the summer, instead of during the semester -- if this had been a teaching day, we would have really had to scramble to find coverage. Hopefully, we can at least get the initial wave of daycare/pre-school sickness over with before our classes start in mid-August. Kev and I are both on a MWF schedule this fall, which is inconvenient for illness. Need to figure out some kind of back-up childcare plan in case it does come up -- I think it'd just be a few hours of coverage we'd need, while our classes are overlapping.
UIC does state in its policies that if your kids are sick, it counts just the same as if you're sick, which I appreciate -- very family-friendly policy. But that said, as a professor, even if you're sick, you don't really get sick days. Not unless you absolutely have to take them. You try as much as you can to provide some kind of class for your students, if it's possible, whether that's sending in assignments or better, having a colleague cover the class. And if no one can cover and you can't get in for even a bit, then you try and let them know as early as possible, to save them driving in. But you probably won' catch all of them, which is frustrating. Definitely one advantage of a nanny over daycare is that she can take care of the kids while they're sick! (Also, daycare costs us about an hour of travel time -- half-hour to drop-off in the morning, half-hour to pick-up.)
Revised plan for today: Respond to e-mails as much as she'll let me, clear desk, pay bills, unpack, clean, cook. Maybe go out and write for an hour or two if Kevin can watch her; he's still sleeping, and I'm not sure what his schedule is today.
I made the cauliflower curry and mushroom curry last night -- both came out great! Good cooking day. Sometimes you have the mojo and sometimes you don't. Today, coconut sambol, eggplant sambol, possibly mango salad if the mangos are good. Also tilapia curry; I was going to do salmon, but realized I have quite a bit of tilapia in the freezer for some reason, so, revised plan. The freezer was also where I discovered the eggplant, which I'd sliced and seasoned for a dinner party previously, but never got to finishing, so just froze. I'm not sure how well it'll survive that process, but it's worth taking it out, thawing it, frying it, and seeing what kind of shape it's in. Hopefully, delicious.
Okay, time to go check on the kid again. Kavi's ensconced on the couch with milk, banana, a veritable horde of stuffed animals, and Dora. She probably prefers being sick at home to being healthy at school. Sigh.
I have no idea if this would help a child’s ear infection, or how Kavi would react, but when my ears are acting up (more common with hearing aid users like myself than most people), I drip peroxide into the upturned ear from a cotton square thoroughly wetted from the bottle, let it sit in the ear a few seconds, then turn the head over to drain. I follow this up with another cotton square wetted from a combination of white vinegar and rubbing alcohol. I keep a bottle of the latter on my shelf as well. This works great for me.
I rarely need the peroxide – I use the vinegar/alcohol combo after each shower or swim, to wash out the water that’s gotten in, wipe out any fauna it carried with it, and help the ear canal to dry before I reinsert the hearing aids.
I am not a doctor. This may be terrible advice for a kid.
As a hearing-impaired person, though, I worry about ear infections – they do cause hearing damage on occasion. (Mine was probably measles, which is a lot more serious than your average ear infection, but I still worry.) I also remember getting them as a kid, and they really hurt! Yow!
Re: the vinegar/alcohol mix
As I’m prone to ear infections, my doctor recommended years back that I use that daily. (And also that I use a hair dryer to dry out my ears after showering, though I’ve taken to using earplugs of late.) I really should do so, because it helps ward infections off, and it’s perfectly painless when you’re not actually infected.
I would note, however, that when you already DO have an ear infection, the solution does help, but it also burns like hell.