I have never been happier for a New Year to usher in.

There is nothing like the gift of a fresh start to help you shake off something like viral pneumonia, RSV and Pink Eye in your household over the holidays.

Cosmic Perspective? Perhaps….

As you know, I had visions of making Christmas morning the most spectacular event ever.   My reality consisted of administering breathing treatments, forcing antibiotics and keeping charts of who got what medication at what time.

I always try to learn from the situations life throws at me.  Seven trips to the pediatrician in two weeks has taught me an important life lesson – I cannot handle a crisis.

Why?

When my kids get sick I immediately go into panic mode. I call in the troops and request all of the home-made chicken soup two grandmothers can muster. I make intimate friends with Google as I research the ailment, the medication and EVERY. SINGLE. side effect there could possibly be. I find every friend (they can attest to this) who has ever dealt with the ailment with their own children and then I pick their brains for every detail they have.

I turn into a complete maniac.

Our circumstances were not helping my state. Not only did she have pneumonia, but she had pneumonia with a deadline.

It was Friday, December 19^th, 6 days before Christmas and the pediatrician told me that if she wasn’t better by Monday, she would have to go to CHOP and spend a few days there. I had one precious weekend to do everything I could possibly do to get her to better or to maintain her status or we were spending Christmas in the hospital.

I bribed my little girl with everything possible to get her to take her foul medication. I threatened her to drink an ungodly amount of fluids to keep her hydrated and I begged her to eat to keep her strength up.

Monday came and the pneumonia didn’t get worse, but it wasn’t better but we were at least spared the hospital. And that is when I stopped caring about the holiday at all and just wanted my daughter to get better. No one slept or really functioned normally for over a week. Christmas came and went and her oxygen levels began to creep back up and color came back to her face and I started to breathe again…and that’s when I saw the other ball start to drop….I saw my seventeen month old start to get pale. I heard her sneeze a few times and then the cough came.

And that’s when I cracked.

My youngest got RSV, I got a cold and pink eye and my husband is just now getting over a version of all of it. Almost three weeks later, we are just starting to shake off the cobwebs and get back to normal.

Now that I can breathe again – and think rationally – I am left wondering why it is that I am so afraid when my kids get sick? Is it the onslaught of information out there? Is it Google taunting me with scary facts and figures? It is my own morbid obsession with knowing every possible bad outcome?

I recently purchased the book “How Not To Die” by Dr. G.

Dr. G is a medical examiner in Florida with her own forensic television show. She has turned her vast knowledge of the causes of preventable death into a book.  The same day I saw her appear on The Rachel Ray show I went out and purchased the book.

Surely, a book on how NOT to die would provide me with the knowledge of how to keep my family safe from premature death.

I read the book in a day. It was an easy read, and while informative, it was common knowledge. I found myself thinking, “This is all common sense. I know this already!” And it’s exactly common sense that I lose when my kids get sick.

I don’t need to buy books and exercise my search engine to find my common sense.

I just need to get a grip.

I need to learn that things like viral pneumonia and RSV are parts of life.

Unavoidable? Maybe…. but they still occur and freaking out isn’t going to teach my kids how to act when they are faced with ailments on their own in the future.

Instead of Googling “Side effects of Biaxin in a preschooler” I needed to google “How to get my ass off the crazy train!” I needed to breathe. I should have remembered that there are mothers out there that deal with FAR, FAR worse than what I have dealt with and if they can get through it and do it with grace, I surely can do the same with something like what we were faced with.

My kids are going to get sick. Everyone’s kids are. It’s a fact of life, but most likely, 9 times out of 10, they are going to recover. Somewhere down deep inside, I know this but I forget it when I am in the midst of the chaos.  

I feel bad for moms and caretakers alike these days. There is too much information out there and too many people telling us what is and isn’t good for the kids. I find it impossible to dose out something as simple as Motrin without checking the dose 3 or 4 times to make sure it’s right. It’s almost like the media took my common sense and turned it into chaos.

Whatever the culprit, I almost wish we were in the pre-Internet days and information overload wasn’t an option.  There’s a reason ignorance is called bliss. 

This time, in the end the only thing I learned for sure is…

Common sense rules, Google drools.

Last 5 posts by MusingMom

• Keep Away, Grinch - December 22nd, 2008
• No Village Idiots Here... - January 20th, 2009
• Mom: The Official Buzz Kill.... - February 5th, 2009
• Where's MY sticker? - February 22nd, 2009