The Best Laid Plans, or Poor Sick AJ

Some of you know that last Spring, Abby auditioned for a pretty exclusive regional children's choir, Children's Choir of Southwest Missouri. She made it, of course, because she is awesome, and so every single Tuesday night starting in August, we've driven out to Springfield for rehearsals.

Their concert was this weekend, the thing they have been working for for 4 months. But last Wednesday, AJ came home from school with a sore throat and headache. She missed school Thursday and Friday. She was running a temp of about 102, and her throat was hurting her terribly, she was crying and everything.

We went to the doctor on Friday (our awesome nurse-practitioner, Nancy), and Nancy gave her one of those 3-dose antibiotics because she had a throat infection (not swine flu--we dodged that bullet again!). Nancy told her that if she was going to be able to sing Saturday, she'd have to miss the dress rehearsal and not use her voice at all--not even to talk to us. She had to write everything in notes. It was kind of funny. AJ can be very expressive in writing!

I got permission for her to miss the dress rehearsal Friday night, hoping she'd feel better by Saturday night, and have some sort of voice to sing with. But she really didn't. Her throat was still very sore, her voice was raspy and hoarse, and she kept having coughing fits--which hurt her throat even more. We thought we might try to go to the concert, so she could at least be there for her choirmates, but the coughing sort of precluded that. You can't sit in a choir concert if you're coughing up a lung--it disturbs people.

So, after all those months of work, our poor baby didn't even get to sing in the concert. It was really disappointing for her, and for us, but mostly it was just terrible watching her suffer with being so sick. Poor little thing.

That's not the only sickness we've had this season. Matt had the flu, which really took him out of commission for almost a week, and both girls had terrible sinus infections that kept them out of school for a couple of days. But we're mostly doing okay, thanks to Nancy and a lot of good luck.

And obsessive wiping down of all surfaces with Clorox disinfectant wipes.