Sometimes, the cosmos, or the universe, or whatever it's called, has got ingenious ways of giving you a kick up the backside... Really quite remarkable how it then drags you out of feeling sorry for yourself, and points out what is actually important.
The kids - for instance - are hardly ever ill. They tend to go through life care-free, apart form the ones that are meant to make them grow and become stronger. So, really, we've been pretty spoilt - no life-threatening things have come on our paths, nothing mayor like friends of us have had to deal with. Luckily in a way, but it can make you pretty nonchalant... So when Polly had her annual cold/fever/burn out last week, it was unusual but not terribly so. She slept lots, we talked lots and played games, read books, had loads of quality time. By yesterday she was ready to go back to school, and Felix took over the relay baton - he was all shivery and his croup had taken hold of him (another annual occurrence) when he came in from school at three in the afternoon. He went to bed by himself (rare!) and seemed to surrender to whatever bug had grabbed him. I had a look at him every now and then, to see if he was okay, and then i noticed a few spots on his cheek. A few alarm bells started ringing - in the last 16 years, whenever there was meningitis alert, the spots loomed large in my memory - that and fever, being sick and a stiff neck. He had two of those three... Waaahhh!!! He had quite a few pinprick spots, which appeared to spread, so i slipped into mega-controlled super mum and contacted the doctor. Of course, they're dealing with Mexican flu victims from all over Western Brabant and it took ages to get through. All sorts of scenarios whizzed through my head -what if... and what if... Alan came along and Otto and Max stayed with Polly, who ad already fallen asleep by then.
It turned out to be innocent - the spots were because of his fever, if it was meningitis they would be all over his body, and his neck would be stiff, and a whole load of other symptoms would appear. He was fine, he just needed to go to bed and sleep. Which he did and by now he's already a lot better.
So this morning we were all ready to get Polly back to school after a week at home, Otto would be driven to school, Max was going to stay with Felix, Polly's lunch box was ready, and then there was an almighty crash upstairs, as if something big was thrown down from the attic. The hush was ominous - then Polly started crying. Loud, panicky and pained... I was upstairs in seconds and found her on the floor, apparently fallen down and very upset. A quick check showed nothing was broken, but her head hurt. From a previous fall when Otto fell off a swing-thing in the playground and had mild concussion, i remembered the headache, and that throwing up meant trouble. She seemed to not tick any of the trouble-boxes, and again we appeared to get off lightly. The doctor's assistant on the phone told me to get her to lie down as much as possible and look out for things that were not right...
So. Quiet time here for the next couple of days... Lots of talking, playing games and reading books for me. Maybe the cosmos can find less dramatic ways of showing me what's important next time...
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