Torture?

It sucks when kids are sick; you want to take away their pain and make them feel better.

This happened to us last weekend, Boy Wonder came down with a fever that went as high as 104.7, he was just burning up. We doped him up on Tylenol and called the help nurse, offered through our pediatrician, to see what we could do to bring his temperature down. While we were waiting for the nurse to call back we went ahead with a cold bath.

Let me interject here that one of my memories from growing up was being given the old ice bath to cool down a high fever.

Now the Boy's bath did not contain any ice but the water was cold cold cold. Sherrill said that the bath was really cold but remembering my personal experience mentioned above (thanks Mom) I said that it was fine as we plunged him into the less than tepid water. Screams rolled, teeth chattered, I think he may have even walked on water; it appeared that Caden did not enjoy the experience. After 10 minutes or so of him covered in bath water up to his waist and us pouring cold water over his head and shoulders we took him out and dried him off. Happy that we could hear again, we diapered and dressed him and put him down to sleep. His temperature had dropped several degrees easing our concerns.

About this time the phone rang with the help nurse calling us back. After a few minutes on the phone with her discussing the situation Sherrill ended the call with a, well unique, look on her face. It turns out we were right about the bath but uhm wrong about the temperature. Apparently just getting his skin wet is enough to cool down the fever, the water doesn't need to be cold.

So essentially, we took a sick boy, exposed him to freezing water, ignored his pleas to stop and his chattering teeth while we continued to poor the water over his entire body when we could have just given him a normal bath. Thank god he is too young to remember the experience but we are starting a therapy fund just in case.