Eye Of The Tiger (Updated)

If, that is, your eye is not so swollen you can barely see out of it.And having Popeye arms might be cool if it weren’t also due to a most heinous mosquito bite. (Can you tell I watched Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure this weekend?) Seriously? This whole mosquito thing is getting old. I guess that’s a hazard of living in the south. Well, one of them, anyway. I’m ready for a good freeze for no other reason than to get rid of the horrible little blood-sucking insects for a little while.

The swelling takes several days to go away usually, and for a really nasty one like on his arm, it’ll be there for a good week and a half.

We give him oral Benadryl (dosage according to his weight and age per the Pharmacist), topical hydrocortisone cream (a prescription strength the doc gave us last summer for these most unrighteous things), (Sorry, there’s more Bill & Ted), and for the ones like on his arm that get all blistery, hot to the touch, and hard, I use a calamine/benocaine spray the Pharmacist recommended. Sound like a little overkill? Just imagine what these things look like without all that stuff!

I know I’m not the only one whose kid has issues like this. But I’d love to know what you guys use to give your little ones relief.

Then, on Sunday morning, the boy woke up with a fever. He had it all day, and it never went over 101.9 until almost bedtime. Usually I'm fighting to keep it down, so this whole hovering around 100/101 is a new thing for us. Not that I'm complaining. I'd much rather it be manageable and do its job, whatever that happens to be. I was just hoping it would get better instead of worse.

My cousin, who is a nurse, suggested a possible link between the most heinous mosquito bites and the fever. And according to the vast wisdom I was able to browse on the Internet, it's quite possible. Because you know that if it's on the Internet, it must be true.

The boy spent his evening sitting on the couch watching George, wearing his fleece footie pajamas halfway unzipped (that's the way he likes to wear them now - I guess he thinks this is the 80's) with his cowboy boots on. How he can stand to put his feet into those boots with the pajamas on is beyond me. But hey, if it makes him happy....

So we'll see what Monday holds for us. Sad to say, I'd really like to get my grocery shopping and laundry done. I'd rather not have to take the boy to the doctor. But we will see. I'll let you know how it turns out.

**Update** So, we ended up going to the doctor this morning since C fought a fever all night and woke up with it still hanging around this morning. The doc says he believes it to be an upper respiratory virus, and we should be back to normal in a few days. I'm hoping he's right!