A House of Medicine

The past couple of weeks in our household have been very eventful:

For a couple of weeks, I received several notices from Jillian's school that there had been a "lice-outbreak" in all the Kindergarten classes.  I checked Jillian's hair several times and she looked like she was all in the clear. But Wednesday of last week, they conducted an inspection of every child in K and the nurse discovered that Jillian did have lice.  Thankfully, it was a very mild case; Jillian's head was not even itching!

Jillian took it all in good stride. We treated her that afternoon with special lice killing shampoo and combed every single hair with a special metal comb.  Then we washed nearly everything on her room as well as some other items in the house (about 10 LARGE loads of laundry with HOT water) and put all the other items in quarantine for two weeks in a plastic trash bags.  I also threw away all our old brushes, and bought new hair brushes, new hair clips and pony-tail holders too. 

Here Brad is carefully reading the instructions for what to do to KILL THE LICE.  Faith did not have lice (at least not yet!) but loved sporting the shower cap like her big sister.  The next morning, Brad checked Faith's hair and discovered a couple suspicious things in her hair.  So, after Brad went to work, I treated Faith's hair AND REWASHED all the sheets and comforters! (I was so, so, so happy that we had decided to quarantine several of the things because it meant less things for me to wash the second time around. :-)) I then took Jillian to school for her to be re-checked by the school nurse and our treatment was SUCCESSFUL! Hooray!

After I heard that Jillian had lice, my head started itching really badly and I felt certain that I must have  lice too! I was treated with the special shampoo as a precaution but I only had a little dandruff... no lice! LOL!

While we were dealing with the lice, Jillian's teacher, Mrs. C was extremely sweet and called us at home to check on how we were doing and asked if there was anything she could do for us.  She even offered to come on over during AWANA's to help me do some laundry!  I thought 16 Handles was a much better alternative for the two of us. :-)

(NOTE: Just recently, I invited Mrs. C and and her two little girls to join Jillian and Faith at AWANA's.  Both of Mrs. C's girls really enjoyed their visit and decided to join our church's club! I have really enjoyed getting to see Mrs. C and her two adorable girls every Wednesday night.  Another great thing has been that I have been able to spend more time with Mrs. C.  The first week, we went to Starbucks and the next week (the lice week) we went to 16 Handles together!)

The day after Faith had her lice treatment, Anna decided she didn't want to be left out of all the fun and somehow found and took down the special shampoo and then washed her hair with it! I immediately plopped her in the bath and washed her hair with real shampoo.

That same morning, in the same bathroom, she also found my contact lens container and pretended to put my contacts into her eyes.  She spilled the contacts out onto the carpet, making it very hard for me to find, and they got all dried up! Another incident from the SAME morning is Anna stood up on a kitchen chair,  found a box of baking soda on our counter and poured all of it into a bowl for me.  I thought it was nice of her to put the baking soda into something and not onto the floor but it wasn't exactly the most helpful thing either! Whoever said "girls are much easier than boys", doesn't know my little Anna. 

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This week, the trials with our health continued.... Thursday morning, Faith woke up with a fever of a 103. She was extremely lethargic and white as a sheet. She told me her neck hurt and that her tummy hurt too. So, as soon as I got Jillian on the bus, I called the urgent care place to make an appointment for her. I was grateful they had an appointment available at 9:00 and took it immediately. So Faith, Anna, and I scrambled together and ran over to the doctor's office, only to wait for nearly an hour before being seen and then for Faith to be diagnosed with strep.  

The doctor recommended that Anna and I (my throat was hurting a little bit) be checked as well because it can be a ping-pong affect if someone in the house has it and isn't treated for it.  So I went back to the waiting room, filled out the paper work for Anna and me and then we waited again for the doctor. In the end, Anna and I both were checked and we were diagnosed as positive for strep too.  So, after nearly three hours of being at the doctor, I called Brad and told him the news and asked him to leave work, pick up Jillian, and go to the doctor too! And sure enough, Brad and Jillian were positive too.  We were a family of five sick people!  The happy news is we were well taken care of.. our friend Michelle bought us some groceries that night, and several friends left us encouraging messages on Facebook, and others called to check up on us on the phone too!  

Jillian was super sad to leave school that day because it was her friend Hannah's birthday and they were going to have a cupcake party at the end of the day.  But just the weekend before Hannah and Jillian had a play-date together and Hannah lives just up the street from us. So on the way home from school, Hannah brought a cupcake for Jillian and for Faith and Anna too! It made Jillian's day so much better and was a very special treat! :-)

We labeled the syringes "A" for Anna, "F" for Faith, and "J" for Jillian to keep them all straight.

Here are mommy and daddy's medicines.

And the girls refrigerated medicines, we are all feeling much better and are on the mend. Hopefully, all this yucky sickness will be left behind us, because after all, we have two upcoming March birthdays to celebrate now!