I'm Such A Rebel!

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Both the wee ones' schools - as I'm sure the majority of yours - have a rule. If you child is sick, the child must stay home. If there is a fever over 99.5 degrees, diarrhea, vomting, etc - stay home. And that includes for 24 hours after symptoms subside.

I understand the rule completely. There have been plenty of times when I thought the wee ones were fine, only to have symptoms recur four or five hours later. I'd much rather ensure the wee ones are totally healthy before sending them back to school than push them and have them be sicker longer.

The parents who send their kids back to school because they gave their kids Tylenol and the fever went away? Oh they drive me nuts. Tylenol is a fever rdeucer not an illness remover, and those children are most likely still contagious and getting others sick when they're at school when they shouldn't be.

On a side note, I firmly believe that this rule should hold for teachers, too. I get that you have only so many sick days (although being married to a teacher, you have way more sick days than I ever did, and he'll likely retire with the maximum days banked) and don't want to miss out on teaching if at all possible, but I don't want you getting my wee ones sick either! Stay home if you're sick.

I write this as my husband - a teacher - is upstairs sleeping at 1:30pm. It's the second time in the last two or so weeks that he's been sick (shouldn't he be immune by now?), and he's miserable. He called a sub last night and didn't even go to the school to set up the classroom for the sub, which he usually does even when sick. When he had his cold two weeks ago though? He went into school just dosed up on DayQuil, much to my chagrin.

I haven't always followed this requirement though.

In fact, I can think of a specific instance when I sent Little Miss back to school about eight hours after her last incident of diarrhea. I had a good reason, though. I promise.

Little Miss has had a huge issue with dairy, and we've kept her clean for almost two years. Or ... nearly clean. Her teachers in preschool a year and a half ago gave her cheddar Goldfish, not realizing that there would be dairy in them. I'm not sure if the word "cheddar" or "cheese" was more confusing, or if they simply neglected to look at the box with the big milk in bold letters just under the ingredient list showing allergens.

Needless to say, I got a call from the nurse shortly thereafter saying that I needed to come pick up Little Miss, as she'd had two nasty bouts of diarrhea already. I found out about the Goldfish the next day.

That was on a Monday. On Wednesday, she was still suffering, my poor girl. She'd missed three days of school because her teachers had given her a food she was not allowed to have - though her allergy was well-known and documented in the classroom. I was not a happy camper.

Once she made it through Wednesday overnight unscathed and it had been almost three full days, I knew she was fine. She'd managed to get to the bathroom in time the entire previous day, and her classroom had a bathroom in it. There was no way she was contagious (much as I wished at that time that she could pass her dairy allergy along to the teacher who gave her the Goldfish), as she hadn't been "sick" before that anyway.

So.... Thursday morning, I sent her off to school. Luckily, she had no issues, and I received an apology from the teacher. But technically, she shouldn't have returned to school probably until the following Monday, as she was still a little ummmmmm off on Thursday. Shhhhh, don't tell that I broke the rule there (and no, if it was an actual contagious illness, I wouldn't have done it).

My only hope right now is that we contain the current illness to the "sick room" (read: guest bedroom) where my husband is currently quarrantined. I'm already tired of being the nurses on call! (And I mean that in the nicest possible way....)

Wish us luck. I'm off to go down some more Vitamin D!