(Not) The flu

K woke up this morning hot to the touch and complaining that her stomach hurt. As I heard that, I got a sinking feeling in my own stomach at the realization that the flu had caught up to us. I had been recently cursing the Philadelphia schools for sending home permission slips to give the H1N1 vaccine and then deciding that they weren't giving it to the preschoolers (yes! We shall give the vaccine to all students except the ones most vulnerable to complications from the flu! This makes perfect sense!), and my curses doubled up. Anyway, we gave her ibuprofen and settled in to wait for more symptoms to show up.

Meanwhile, we got a call from our pediatrician's office asking if we could reschedule Alec's well baby appointment today because the office was filled with sick kids. Gosh, do I want to take my currently healthy four-month-old into the cesspool of disease and pestilence masquerading as your waiting room? Why yes! Or not. We rescheduled the appointment. Although I suppose it doesn't matter if we try to avoid disease by staying home if K is going to bring it home to us from the plague grounds of preschool, Seventh Seal style ("The salmon mousse!").

At noon her fever was down to 100 and she was more chipper, but not showing any other symptoms. She slept most of the afternoon. In the late afternoon, I tried asking her if anything hurt, trying to find out what symptoms she might be developing (at this point I had pretty much decided she must just have one of those anonymous viruses small children like to pick up), and she said again her stomach hurt, but nothing else. Did it hurt when she pees? Yes. Was it her lower stomach that hurt? Yes.

Drat. Another UTI. On the plus side, not the flu and not contagious! On the negative, it was 4:30, half an hour before the doctor's office closed and an hour after the appointment we had given up for Alec and decided not to take K to instead because what could the doctor do for a virus? Sigh.

We have an appointment for her tomorrow morning (a mere hour before the dentist appointment that I've been making and breaking for the past year and a half, but that's another story), and hopefully getting antibiotics will get her well enough to ship her back to school on Wednesday, poor bunny. And I will continue to be grateful that we're continuing to dodge the flu bullet. As hard as it is to watch the numbers climb on the thermometer as your toasty warm preschooler lies limp and flushed, the terror of a young infant with the flu is one I would just as soon avoid.