Whiteknuckled on the wheel
A loaf of bread right from the oven, or a cup of tea fresh poured out the kettle, that’s how warm she feels. She sits in my lap curled against my chest and I soon break a sweat. This is fever night four, and fever three since the start of June.
When I was a kid I was told I had a heart defect, a malformed valve. (“Never do coke, Nathan,” my mom told me, “you might have a heart attack with your heart.”) At thirty I hadn’t seen a cardiologist in ten or fifteen years and my wife was pregnant with our now-feverish oldest kid. We saw an ultrasound specialist to check if our baby had a similar heart defect. Nothing. Relief. The technician said “you should see a cardiologist too if it’s been a while, just to make sure everything’s okay.” So I did. And they found nothing. My cardiologist had since died, there are no records. The later cardiologist believed what I said and said “it’s a puzzle, but your heart looks normal.”
The alleged heart defect meant that my heart didn’t fully empty between beats. That reservoir of blood was an infection risk, especially due to dental visits, for some reason never fully explained to me - something about what if the dentist scraped my mouth and some mouth bacteria entered my blood stream, which never made sense to me since I flossed and sometimes cut my gums, and went to karate class where I wore a mouth guard in case I got hit in the face. Surely germs could get in that way too?
Anyway, I took penicillin before every dentist visit, and again after. I went twice a year, more than that the two times I got cavities. Until I was seven it was liquid penicillin. I remember it tasting like what I imagined poison tasted like, like the smell of burnt plastic, something you’re not supposed to ingest. As I got bigger the number of spoonfuls went up. I would cry, sometimes spit it out, which meant another dose. My mom would have to sit on me and hold me down to make me take it. She would say “the doctor said you could die, you have to take this!”
My fevered six year old cries at the thought of taking medicine. She’s picky about tastes, likes a limit palate of foods. She very much dislikes doing things she dislikes doing. When she had strep throat she spat out the medicine and my wife said “you have to take it or we’ll have to get you a shot!” and my kid said “I want the shot, that would be better.”
The pediatrician said yesterday that he thinks it’s bacteria on her tonsils causing the fevers. He prescribed a course of antibiotics for two weeks. Liquid. He didn’t want to give her a shot, said “can you try to take the liquid?” She nodded. I think she’s trying, she got close to taking the medicine, sobbing then at the last minute shouting “no! I won’t!” I said “you might have to get, like, fourteen shots.” “I know.” “That sounds better to you?” “I guess so.”
No one prepared me for how powerless I would feel, how little I could steer as a parent. My parents felt controlling and powerful to me. I’m old enough now to know they were largely just gripping the wheel and pumping the brakes, fishtailing along trying not to end up the ditch again.
My kid’s a person, and one with strong opinions. She makes choices, and would rather get a shot than drink liquid penicillin. As with any other person, she’s making decisions here, and it bugs the shit out of me. Just take the damn medicine, suck it up, get over the fear, you’re making things harder on yourself. This won’t be the last time, I’m sure.
Between the damn kid and the damn doctor we’re two days behind on the antibiotics. They might not work. They might. If they will, I want them to work faster. I resent the delay. I’d be angry at anyone who made my kid feel crappy, and that includes my kid. And of course I worry. Will this be a pattern? A syndrome, fevers every 3 or 4 weeks for years? Or is it a sign of something deeper that’s wrong? I think to myself “I’m sure she’s fine” but I’m not sure, there’s no certainty here - not only am I not really steering but the rain is pissing down and the wipers don’t work so I can’t even fucking see. I just grip the wheel, pump the brakes, fishtailing along hoping there’s not another car or a deer or a ditch gonna leap out.