Thursday, December 06, 2007

Fevers and Furnaces


This is really just a filler post because I'm feeling so guilty for not posting in so long. And the post that I've been working on is taking me a lot longer than I'd planned. Oh well, if I waited until I got caught up on life, this stuff would be so irrelevant that it'd be practically useless to post.

Sunday night I stayed up late and ended up getting to bed around midnight. Then promptly at 1am, Dolly woke up fussing. When I went in to check on her she was drenched in sweat and burning up. I took her temperature under her arm and after watching the numbers rise for what seemed like forever, came up with a reading of 102.7 From what I understand, you're supposed to add a degree and a half to figure out what the temp really is. I gave Dolly some Motrin, pulled her hair into a ponytail off her neck, and wiped her face down with a cool cloth. Thus settled, she went back to sleep and only woke up a few more times in the next two hours before succumbing to the power of fever-reducing meds. Thankfully, the fever didn't come back and the next day she was pretty much back to her old self.

Then last night just before we went to bed Sir mentioned that the house felt colder than usual and asked me if I'd turned the thermostat down. I hadn't intentionally touched it and told him so, but got up to check just in case I'd bumped it accidentally sometime during the day. It was set to where we normally have it, and just for good measure, I nudged it up a notch, checked on the kids again - gave each of them an extra blanket (their rooms were even colder than ours was) and then I headed to bed. For a change I had to fight for my double share of the blankets last night because Sir never warmed up. Even with my lions' share of blankets I was still freezing. I pulled Emma into bed to nurse twice too - that's two more times than she normally nurses at night, but she was fussy (probably because she was cold). I'd even tossed an extra blanket on our bed before I hopped in last night - not that it helped much.

Needless to say, this morning the house was even colder. Thinking back, I realized that the furnace didn't turn on a few minutes after I'd adjusted the thermostat last night, and the thermometer this morning prooved it. It was a shivering 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) cooler than normal. At least the sun was shining this morning - I can only image how cold it would have been if it was raining today. I had a flashback memory of dressing for kindergarten in front of my mom's open oven door so I turned the oven on and every half hour I've opened the oven door for 10 minutes or however long I can stay guarding the oven before being needed somewhere else.

Sir's going to stop by to take a look at the furnace on his way over to Chasm's house where he'll work on our van a bit more. The water pump on the van died last week so we've been pouring water into it constantly to keep from overheating anytime we go somewhere. Yes, it was rather inconvenient to have to pull over in a blizzard to put water in your overheating vehicle! More on that project later. Anyway, if Sir can't fix the furnace tonight, he'll probably pick up some electric heaters. We've wanted to get a couple for a long time, and have just put it off since we didn't need to have extra heaters. Then we won't freeze while we look into fixing the furnace problem! Now I know why summertime is my favorite time of year!

So much for a short filler post. I must like to talk or something, because I can really get carried away if I give myself a minute. I was originally just killing time since PC was not being good and taking his nap. I've had to go in to his room a few times. Now naptime is almost over and I'll probably let him up. He's probably too cold to sleep. It's amazing how fast a room can cool down when the door is closed and the heat is on the other side!

3 comments:

  1. If you are going to be at the sing, I can give/lend you a big heater. (Not sure if I want to keep it or not.) It's electric and looks like this one but is simpler:

    http://www.heater-home.com/
    product/157.aspx

    (take out the enter)

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  2. Just a note...when the kids come down with fever...run a bathtub two inches with tepid water (not enough to chill), then put the child in it and splash some water on the feverish bodies. We had to do this when Jailgy ran a raging fever. On doctor's advice not to move her to the hospital for fear of convulsions, we managed with Mitsuye's help to get the fever down a notch. Upon evaluation at the hospital it was discovered she had a Strep-staph infection. Was hospitalized a week.

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  3. The doctor also suggested we use a tepid enema. We did this and I was startled that she retained ALL the water. I guess this showed dehydration.

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