SubhanAllah. It’s 2 am again. It turns out that the reason why Khalid has been cranky, fevery, and screamy all night for the past four nights is because he has a throat infection.
This is the fourth all-nighter that Khalid and I are pulling in the past four days. And I think I neglected to mention that he got his hand caught in an elevator earlier this week. An area of skin about the size of a quarter was scraped off from his right hand, and despite our attempts to keep it clean and well-bandaged, it turned gooey and yellow by the next day, and the fever immediately followed. So that’s when we took him to the ER at 2 in the morning.
Did I mention that we were in the ER earlier this week. It was at 2 in the morning. The doctor looked at his finger. But apparently, not at Khalid’s throat.
Today we saw the doctor again, because the finger was getting better but the fever was getting worse. The doctor took a look at Khalid’s finger as well as Khalid’s throat, and prescribed antibiotics.
Now, I’m pretty sure that even parents with neurotypical children have to battle their kids into taking the antibiotics, otherwise they wouldn’t be camouflaged with strawberry flavor and a pleasant fruity smell. With our collective powers combined, Joy, HF, and I begged, cajoled, bribed, attempted to coerce, and then eventually forced the antibiotics into Khalid’s mouth for two of his three doses for the day. You can guess how that went. By the time we had all had enough, Khalid needed hosing down, the sofas needed wiping off, and HF’s beard had a pleasant fruity smell. I sincerely hope that of the 10ml we put into Khalid’s mouth, at least 5 made it down.
I hope, InshaAllah, that Khalid is feeling better by tomorrow. My work productivity is zero, my email response time has shot up to one week , my brain feels like tofu, and I’m sure Khalid’s tired of waking up and screaming in the middle of the night. Poor thing. When he woke up two hours ago (midnight) HF and I had just gone to bed, and neither of us had fallen asleep yet. HF and I calmed him down and lay in bed hoping he would fall back asleep. HF eventually dozed off, but Khalid’s eyes remained open. I tried to fall asleep, and Khalid did a commendable job of staying in bed for over an hour, but after that, he’d had enough.
He got into my bed and took the pillow out from under my head. Then, he threw it. Then, he unwrapped the blanket from around me and threw that off as well. Next, he took me by the hand and started to pull. When that failed to get a response (I was pretending to be asleep) he took my head in both hands and began pulling. And then he said…
Wemonade.
So here we are. Khalid is drinking wemonade and watching Super Why. There’s an hour and half before it’s time for me to wake up (heh) and make suhoor, so I’m attempting to fill it with productivity. After I’m done typing this mishmash of an update, I’ll answer some work email, attempt to finish a presentation on customer pyramids (BLAH!), and maybe sneak some of the cold pizza in the refrigerator. Don’t ask me about the cold breadsticks. They didn’t make it past 2:15.
It’s amazing how little we control our own lives. I mean this in a good way. No matter how much I intend, attempt, and fight for going to bed on time so I can wake up and stay up from Fajr, Allah has other plans for me. 🙂 This week, we’re on the night shift. Maybe when Khalid feels better our schedule will return to normal, but for now I can’t be sore about being nocturnal, despite how much it exhausts me and hamstrings my productivity. There are far worse things in the world. Alhamdulillah. 🙂
Cold pizza, anyone?
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