I’ve never considered myself a hypochondriac parent. Thankfully Carter has been a pretty healthy kid. In the past 3 years and 10 months of his life, we had had one ER visit and a handful of “sick visits” to his pediatrician.
That was before our daughter died.
Carter came down with a fever today. This is the first time he has been sick since we lost Lily. And I’m a tad freaking out.
I’m in the middle of reading a book called Heaven is for Real. It’s the journey of a little boy named Colton who, during an emergency operation, traveled to heaven and back. This little boy started off the week before with a stomach bug. And a week later he almost (or did?) died. Colton was 3 years and 10 months old. Same age Carter is today.
So he has a fever. He’s not throwing up, thankfully. At least not yet. Hoping I’m not jinxing myself here…
But a fever can be because he has an infection. Does he have an infection? Is it meningitis? Oh my God, it’s meningitis. Bacterial or viral? The next thing I know, I’m diagnosing him with cancer.
In my almost 4 years of being a parent, I have never had thoughts like this. About a damn fever. A fever in a kid who’s preschool room’s door yesterday listed 2 other children who had gone home sick (mind you pink eye is not cancer with a preliminary symptom of fever).
But this is what happens when you lose a child. When one day your perfectly normal pregnancy ends with a still birth in an utterly silent OR. Because if that happened to your daughter, who’s to say something can’t happen to your perfectly healthy son?
And so here I am. The hypochondriac mother.
love for lily 