I had a day planned of working on a few client sites at home. Instead, I woke to Madigan complaining of a sore throat and severe headache. I knew what that meant: strep. Headaches are her typical strep symptom. So off the pediatrician’s we went to have our suspicions confirmed. One stop at the pharmacy later, and we were back home, camped out on the couch for the day.

I spoiled her most of the day, letting her watch various Tivo’d shows and Tinker Bell (a movie, by the way, that defied all my expectations by being very sweet and rather empowering).

As the movie progressed, she complained increasingly of her headache. By the end, she was clutching her head and crying. I tried to get her to take some ibuprofen, not knowing what else to do, but she simply refused. She kept having crying jags from which she would have a hard time recovering. In between, she would grab her head and tell me how badly it hurt. When she started to complain about neck pain, I began to worry. Headache and neck pain are symptoms of meningitis, and in rare cases strep can cause meningitis. Meningitis is probably right at the top of my all time parental fears. So I called the pediatrician who very calmly talked me down off the ledge: the headache was caused by the strep, the crying was making it worse, she needed to take some ibuprofen.

After another 15 minutes of cajoling, I finally managed to get her to take the medicine, and I then had the brilliant idea of offering her a cold, wet towel for her head. (Why didn’t I think of that one earlier!) 15 seconds later, she was fast asleep.

An hour and a half later, she woke up and was bright and cheerful (or bright-er and cheerful-er–she’s still not 100%).

The rest of the day, she insisted on wearing a cold, wet towel atop her head (she’s upstairs sleeping with one now.) You can just catch a glimpse of it in this photo, which I snapped through a lego window. I kind of love the way it turned out — it captures her eyes which are dark and soulful. You can also tell they’re smiling, for which I am very grateful.

I’m behind on my Daily Shoot stories, although all my photos are up on Flickr. The weekend kind of got away from me. 🙂