Minsy got her first real illness this week as a little flu bug hit our house. Spencer started the week out with a temperature that kept him home from church and then home from school on Monday for good measure. It seemed to pass the rest of us by, thank goodness, but then in the middle of the night on Tuesday Minsy woke up with a high fever. We should have known something was up when she headed straight into her bed without issues the evening before. Usually our nighttime routine involves getting her into bed, having her lay there for a few minutes, Minsy crawling out of bed to see where we are, us putting her back in bed over and over and over, and then finally having her lay down with us for a bit until she falls asleep and we can move her back to her own bed. For now that routine has worked okay. We'll have to do a bit better about having her stay in her own bed eventually, but I've been giving her a bit of leeway in order to provide some extra comfort and assurance to her after the adoption. But, anyway, on Tuesday night she just headed straight to bed and didn't get up to check on us one bit. When she awoke with a fever we gave her some medicine, and she headed back to bed immediately, sleeping through the rest of the night.
Well, the fever continued on and on and on. It was never horribly high -- around 101, and it did go down each time we gave her ibuprofen. She didn't seem to be in much pain or discomfort. She just had this annoying fever that kept her energy down, causing her to sleep the days away. It has gone on for the past three days. I think that today she is doing much better. If it was the same I was going to take her to the clinic to get checked out, but I think that we are on the downhill side of things. I think that this is her first real exposure to a good old-fashioned American flu bug, so her body is figuring out how to fight it the right way. It just takes a little longer for her to get it under control than it did for Spencer. Hopefully it won't spread to any of the rest of us. It isn't a really bad sickness, just annoying.
Minsy has proven to be the world's best sick patient. I have never seen any of my children so willing to take medicine. I don't have to administer it to her. I just pour the proper amount into the cup and hand it to Minsy. She tips it up and swallows the whole amount. She makes sure that she gets every last drop and even comes to us when her fever begins to show up and points to the closet door where the medicine is to let us know that she believes it is time for another dose. There have been no tears, only a little sleepiness. I just hope that this doesn't go on for too much longer. It is hard to see her have to deal with the fever.
On another medical note -- last week Minsy had her first physical therapy appointment. I was a bit worried because I read in her file that she didn't like the physical therapy in China. Well, this ended up being a ton of fun for her. They did some massage on her feet to loosen up the muscles and tendons that were tight in the wrong position. Loosening those muscles will help her feet to maintain their correct position eventually. A lot of the exercises that they had her do involved playing games. She needed to kick a ball so that she could practice balancing on each of her feet. Right now she toddles in a weird way as she walks because she is trying to compensate for lack of balance due to the positioning of her feet. She also had to work on a balance board and walk up and down stairs. She loved it, especially when her therapist brought out her favorite thing in the whole wide world -- BUBBLES! She'll need to get some therapy from us at home along with clinic therapy once a week. She will also need to be fitted for some orthotics (plastic positioners) that she will wear to help her feet maintain proper position. Hopefully all of these things will work so that she won't need any sort of surgery or casting to correct her feet problems. The therapist seemed to think that her muscles were loose enough that they would correct themselves without anything drastic needing to be done. I hope so.
So we end our week as we began it -- with a sick kiddo. Hopefully that will be it for us this year. I sure hope that it doesn't just hit all of us one by one. At this rate someone will be sick for the next month and a half here. Fingers crossed that we'll have a sickness free zone soon!
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