Gut Feelings

My little Katie-Lou is sick. She and I are sharing a sore throat/headache thing but in her it turned into a fever. I picked her up around lunchtime yesterday, but had to stop at the store on the way home to get vitamins, cough medicine and some food for the sickie. In the car, half way to the store she said "Mom, I can't keep my eyes open". So I said "then close them." She did and I extracted a sleeping Kate from the car and plopped her into the shopping cart. She slept through most of the grocery store event, waking only when I put her back in the car to ask me if I remembered to get her some popsicles. Then I lugged her up the stairs and put her in bed. She was awake long enough to insist I read her Rose's Garden, then passed out, giving me time to get some work done, which was the only good thing about her being sick.

That afternoon she had an appointment at the chiropractor. Dr. Liliana commented right away that Kate was all jacked up (my words) then said, as she was checking out Kate's midsection "wow, she has a lot of emotional stuff going on here." She moved Kate around only slightly, this way and that and Kate, who'd been silent, began to tell Dr. Liliana all about her dog Lola and that she is dead and now she's just gone and we really miss her. "She didn't get to have her 9th birthday" Kate lamented. Interestingly, Lola's 9th birthday would have been this weekend, but that had not occurred to me until Kate started talking about it. Kate and her chiropractor chatted a little regarding the fact that yes, we can no longer see Lola but she will always be remembered and maybe we could do something to celebrate her birthday for her...and I stood by trying not to cry.

Later, when she was done being adjusted but was resting on the table Kate said to me "can you give me a hug even though I'm sick?"

When we were on our way to the chiropractor, I wondered if I should have canceled the appointment and tried to get her to her pediatrician for a (much dreaded) throat culture instead. As we were leaving and Kate, Sarah (who also had an appointment) and I talked more about how much we miss Lola, I was happy we'd come. The pediatrician would never have considered that my child might be susceptible to colds and other bugs because her system was so busy trying to figure out what to do with misunderstood grief. This morning Kate is chatting away, playing catch with her sister and has color back in her cheeks. She has to stay home because she was running a fever as recently as 10:00 last night, but she's fine, really.