The First Case

It is official. Jack has his first case of pink eye. He woke up yesterday morning with some goopy stuff in his eye, but I didn't think anything of it. We went out running errands for a couple of hours and then came home to go to our annual neighborhood block party. It was really fun with the police department bringing this little train and giving train rides through the neighborhood for the kids. There was supposed to be a big jumpy thing, but somehow it never showed up. But it was fun and it was even warm enough for the kids to go swimming in the pool, which Jack did. He was not complaining of anything at this time, so I let him get in the pool.

So there I was talking to the lady at the police department who organizes all these events and up walks Jack and I had to look at him all of 2 seconds to know that he had pink eye. His eye was literally dripping the goopy stuff and it was pinker than pink. How in the span of three hours had that happened? And of course, being Saturday, his doctor was closed.

I packed us up and walked home with Jack complaining and crying the entire half mile walk home. I woke Jim up who was sleeping from working the night before and told him what was going on and that we were off to Urgent Care because there was no way I was going to wait until Monday. And the official diagnosis - pink eye. This was after the doctor put the glowing drops in his eye and shined the light showing all the bacteria - totally cool by the way. Now we are armed with the eye drops and instructions not to go anywhere for the next 24 hours, which means no church and no soccer game this afternoon. I haven't told him that we are not going to the soccer game yet, hoping that he is too miserable to remember he had one today. But the doctor said he could go back to school on Monday.

I also had to make about four phone calls because we were at our small group at church on Friday night with about 8 other kids. I figured it was the right fellow-parent thing to do by warning all the other parents about the possible pink eye breakout.

I let him sleep with me last night (and yes I plan on changing all the pillow cases) and it was plain miserable. He now has a nasty cold with a cough, which combined with the icky eye, kept both of us awake all night long. I finally called it quits at 3:30 and got us up to put him on the couch to watch Thomas videos. Oh and yeah, I am pretty sure, my right eye is now infected too. Nice little benefit of having kids with the infectious bacteria.

But I have to thank God because I know it could be worse. Like being the parent of the little 11-year-old girl who died locally last week with the staph virus. Makes ya want to keep your kids in a bubble I tell ya.

On a happier note, we want to wish Grammy A. a Happy Birthday! It is her last year of a decade. Hope you have a great day Grammy A.!!!