I'll give you a topic...

...and you can talk amongst yourselves.

"Why do children get sick on Friday nights?"

This question goes hand in hand with, "How come the stomach flu hits children at 2am?"

Which might beget the question, "How much medicine is appropriate to bring on vacation?"

Not kidding when I tell you that DD1 has a knack for getting sick on Friday nights, and that vacations bring out the sickness in her. She has had two throat cultures at that Little Clinic (up at King Soopers) on Saturdays - yes, they worked... she had strep, and two years ago had to take her to a clinic at Walmart on the Saturday before Easter because she came down with a raging ear infection. (The child who NEVER gets an ear infection!) Once in Atlanta she got a stomach virus and threw up 27 times in 24 hours. (Had we been here I would have had her hospitalized for dehydration.) The child came down with a HORRIBLE cough on the second night of a two night trip with her Brownie Troop last Spring - and the mothers there called me about what could they give her? (Her entire cabin lost sleep that night.)

Why am I bringing this up now?

We are leaving for our WDW vacation on Monday morning. Cue DD1 coming down with the flu on FRIDAY NIGHT. I could have put money on it. She's off of school all of Friday. (side note: we aren't able to do anything fun because my car decided that it needed to have some expensive repairs done NOW and it took two days to be fixed.) She wasn't feeling punk until that afternoon. Late that afternoon. Certainly too late for me to process, "Oh, perhaps I'd better run her to the peds office for a quick check to make sure we're not dealing with anything awful." Directly before dinner she gets her fever. The peds office is now closed until after we are to depart on Monday.

Great.

Turns out we don't know FOR SURE if she has the flu. The urgent care clinics are swamped today, but the nurse at Children's hospital (don't you love that Children's has a concerned parent line) said they were seeing all kinds of the illness I had described, and it's most likely Type A or Swine flu - they're different. Good news? The flu they are seeing lasts 3-5 days and is only dangerous if patients are having difficulty breathing. Does my daughter have any breathing difficulty? "No." Well, they say, you can call your pediatrician to see if they'll prescribe anything like Tamiflu, but we won't prescribe it through the hospital unless the child is hospitalized. OK, I'll call the on-call pediatrician.

Now, I should probably mention that we picked our pediatric practice before DD1 was born - and really liked this one because they have an integrated health care philosophy. (Husband in particular liked this.) They are proponents of using homeopathic supports in combination with western medicine. I wasn't surprised that the on-call doctor wouldn't give us a tamiflu script - disappointed but not surprised. His reasoning was that there is now a shortage as it's been prescribed for entire families at a time (which- incidentally - is exactly what I was wanting), and this particular flu seems to be short enough in duration that the effectiveness is in question. (Still, would like to have it in my hot little hands... but I had known before I spoke to him that I wouldn't be getting any. Or, I would have started there!)

Husband is out getting Echinacea, Vitamin C, Zinc, and BHI Inflammation. I'm also taking Motrin, mucinex, delsym, benedryl, ocean spray and vicks vapo rub with us.

I'm not worried about getting the flu. If I get it Husband can take the girls to the parks. I'm not worried about our activity level, as we have 6 1/2 days in the parks and we can take it slow if we need to. I'm worried about two things: 1) DD2 getting it and 2) DD1 being run down and getting a different seasonal virus from the airplane air.

It is what it is. As of right now we're not cancelling our trip.
If she's worse tomorrow we'll re-evaluate.

Cross your fingers, send good thoughts... all prayers are appreciated.
Mom? Are you listening?