Mon 12 Dec 2005
8:29am

If Everett is otherwise occupied when it's time to give Emil a dose of Nyquil before bed, he begs me to wait until he can watch. He hates to miss the facial contortions.

Emil came home from school tired on Friday and laid down immediately. "Are you not feeling well?" I'd asked, and he'd insisted that he felt fine, was just taking a short rest.

Though he's had a good appetite, he's spent the entire weekend extremely stuffed up and mostly in bed. The Nyquil was to help him sleep; I thought without it he might spend the kind of nights I have, lately — fevered, restless. I don't like giving him any kind of medication but can't just leave him feeling that crappy.

Doctors haven't been able to explain why he seems to get so many colds and such intense ones. They have no suggestions. He eats well — lots of fruit, whole grains, unprocessed homemade food, organic, very little junk food on the whole — and has a regular schedule which probably, come to think of it, doesn't really give him enough sleep. Aside from that, the only advice we've had was to have him supplement with cod liver oil and Vitamin A. Been doing that since the spring. His immune system should be strong, and yet ... I've already stopped counting the colds he's had this fall.

He is being referred to a respirologist now. In the meantime, maybe I can figure out a way to get him more sleep. It will mean having him do fewer of the things he normally does in the evenings, but it's doable. I could make his school lunch, for instance, and that would get him to bed earlier. Yeah, maybe we'll start there. There's really nothing else that can be eliminated from his weekday routine. He still has to bath, which takes a good hour; then he's got his physio to do for a half-hour, and his Listening Program, which is only 15 minutes. And we can get serious (again) about limiting his time at the supper table to one hour. Frankly, he is the slowest person I have ever seen, and just getting up from a chair can take a molasses minute.