Picking up where I left off the other day, we did indeed stay home for Super Bowl LIII, in which the Patriots beat the Rams 13-3. The Patriots winning wasn’t a huge surprise, but the score was. The game was a bit of a snoozer. I, in fact, fell asleep before halftime, watched the halftime show (meh) and fell asleep again shortly after the second half started. Tristen woke me up at some point before the game was over and we went to bed.
She was fine to go to work the next morning, but Milly had a fever the night before so we decided to let her sleep in until she woke up, see how she was doing, and figure it out from there. Turns out she had a fever, so I called her pediatrician. They were booked up all day, so they referred me to another office of theirs. They weren’t available until noon, but I wanted to make sure Milly got looked at as soon as possible so I ended up taking her to an Urgent Care while Torrie came over with Gabriel to watch Fawkes and Phoenix.
Milly got seen relatively quickly. She did fine except for the part where they stuck the swab up her nasal cavity. I had to have her lie down, hold her head back and block her hands from swatting the swab away. I was getting a little annoyed, but both her stepmom and her mom commiserated with her about how much it sucks when they do that. I don’t think I’ve ever had it done, so I didn’t realize just how far up they stick that thing.
With the recent cold, the air in the house has been pretty dry, which, combined with having a stick stuck up her nose, is probably what triggered a massive nosebleed for my poor girl. It started while the nurse was getting the results and it wasn’t too bad. She got some tissue and pinched her nose. Milly gets nosebleeds now and then, but this one didn’t want to stop any time soon. We swung by her school to pick up some schoolwork and to drop off her medical excuse form. That took longer than it should have because there was a guy in the office talking to the admin lady about catering all kinds of different events. They kept talking and talking, and I finally had to butt in, saying something like, “I’m sorry, but I’m in kind of a rush.” I handed over the paper and she gave me Milly’s work.
When I got back to the car Milly was kind of freaking out because her nose started bleeding more and I think she had a big clot or some sort of glob that came out. I took her inside to see the school nurse, but she was out for the day so we were given a bunch of tissue and she was told to make sure she pinched it and kept pressure on it.
After that, we stopped by the pharmacy to pick up her Tamiflu prescription. While the pharmacist was telling me that they didn’t take our insurance there (hospital employee insurance, I might add), Milly’s nose started bleeding more again. Shortly after we left there Amanda called to see how she was doing, but as we were driving down the road a giant clot started coming out of Milly’s nose. I pulled into a random parking lot and had to try to make sure my face didn’t look too shocked because the thing was thick and it was inches long. It made me think of a slug. Actually, I later tried to explain Cthulu to Milly, because it reminded me a little of something H.P. Lovecraft would have written about. Fortunately, I had a box of tissues in the center console, so we had ample supplies to soak it all up.
The nose pretty much stopped bleeding by the time we got to the pharmacy, but they had to call the other one and fill it and all that mess and they weren’t sure how long that was going to take. Torrie had to leave to go get Sebastian before too much longer, so we went back to the house to relieve her. She said she’d stop by and pick up the prescription on her way back from picking up Bash, but it wasn’t ready by then, either. When it was ready, I took the boys and got that along with another one for an inhaler for Tristen, although that was at Target. I popped their car seats into a shopping cart just to speed things up; they were getting pretty tired by that point.
Milly still had a fever when she went to bed. It’s funny how she has been with this flu. She’s certainly a bit worn out, and she has slept a good bit, but you wouldn’t know from looking at her or talking to her that she’s got the flu. She was pretty pale after the nosebleed episode, but that’s about it.
Anyway, because you have to be feverless for 24 hours before going back to school she got to have another day off school, and since there’s a teacher workday tomorrow, she’ll have had a nice five-day break with plenty of time to have gotten better. She spent most of today quarantined in her room.
Tristen used the inhaler when she got to work and was marveling at how much it loosened everything up in her chest.
I noticed after the afternoon nap that Fawkes was pretty warm. I took his temperature, and of course he had a fever, too. He was very run-down and snuggly this afternoon. The earliest appointment I could make was at 4:40, so Tristen took him to that. Flu, of course.
Phoenix, by contrast, was in a particularly good mood today. He was randomly laughing at just about anything. That’s a bit sad, because as much as they swapped bottles and pacis and were just generally in close proximity of each other, I’m fully expecting a fever and a flu for him tomorrow.
I have somehow managed to avoid the flu thus far, but I’ll be lucky not to get it at all. I do have a cough and a sore throat, but outside of that I feel fine. I limited my exposure to Tristen (well, by and large), and I mostly limited my exposure to Milly, but there’s no way I can limit my exposure to Fawkes and Phoenix. If I get sick, I guess I hope it happens soon enough that I can be better for this weekend, though time is running out for that.
I went to Target for the third time in almost as many days to get Fawkes’s Tamiflu. Tristen was pretty worn out from giving the boys their dinner. We ate dinner. Milly, who is pretty much over her fever, hung out in the living room until she was about to fall asleep as we watched Duke play Boston College. The first half didn’t go well as BC, who isn’t very good this year, was up two points. Duke woke up in the second half and won 80-55. Zion Williamson got the crowd really excited when he got the ball and had a wide-open path to the goal, but he did something I’ve never seen. He flubbed a highlight dunk. He’s at least partially human after all.