It's abstract season and I'm home with a sick kiddo, again...

I don't know about other fields, but in mine the month of October is what I call "abstract season". Two conferences that I typically attend have submission deadlines the first week in November. Add on top of that, a last minute announcement about another internal poster session with the nearby medical school where I have a joint appointment. I'm already behind and feeling the pressure to wrap up these analyses but things move slowly when there are other tasks to attend to: meetings, recruiting events (for research subjects), training sessions, and, oh yah, those pesky experiments. Needless to say, when the day care called and said that C was running a fever of 103F a little selfish part inside of me was angry. Not at C, but at the general situation. Can't one week go by where we're all well?

I thought C was coming down with something. He's had a runny nose the past couple of days. He's also been drooling a lot and putting EVERYTHING into his mouth. (Teething? Cold?) He woke up earlier than usual this morning and wouldn't eat breakfast (very unlike him to skip breakfast). I checked his temperature. Normal. So off to day care we went. Now, I have to admit that I'm not entirely sure I understand the timeframe in which all of these events occurred: outside play, temperature taking, and lunch time. When I got there to pick C up he was sleeping. After I got him up he didn't feel THAT warm to me. He wasn't fussy and didn't seem out of it, like you'd expect with a high fever. I wondered if his temperature was as high as they reported to me on the phone. I got him home and took it, getting 101.3F. Wanting to confirm that our thermometer wasn't broken, I found another digital thermometer and carried out my own experiment: one thermometer under each arm for comparison. How's that for a visual? (Here's a funny thermometer story from another blog.) So, definitely a temp but where did the 103F come from? I'm thinking they took it right after he was running around outside, which would, clearly increase temperature. (We sweat to dissipate that extra body heat.)

So, I guess I get to head back in to the lab after my husband gets home so I can get these analyses going. Not the way I like to start off the week...