Cramping My Style

My 8-year-old son has been home from school for two days now due to a sore throat and a very low-grade fever. This is the same kid who had strep about 3-4 weeks ago, took his round of antibiotics and was good to go again. This time I don't believe it's strep because his fever is so low, and much of the time it's totally normal. He's eating and sleeping well and he's not lethargic. He's just complaining that his throat hurts a little.

My son isn't the type of kid to "play hooky" from school either. Sometimes I'll tease him in the early mornings when he's just waking up and I'll ask him if he wants to stay home with me and he'll give me "THE LOOK" and tell me he has to go to school.

I've tried to get him an appointment with a doctor at the clinic, however, they are totally booked and won't allow me to schedule an appointment for tomorrow because they don't schedule appointments in advance. Alrighty then! So I'll have to get up and start calling as early as 6am tomorrow to see if I can possibly get him in to be seen. They say I can take him to the ER if I think it's warranted. Well, it's not an emergency, so I'm not going to go that route. In the meantime, the little man can't go to school with any kind of fever, and of course I don't want to send him if he's not feeling well.

I was wondering if something had happened at school to make the little man unwilling to go. I don't know of anything and he says everything is fine. I told him if he doesn't feel up to going to school, he must really feel poorly, and that means he surely can't feel well enough to play Wii games or go outside. Of course I was trying to call his bluff, thinking perhaps he was milking the situation a bit, but he hasn't budged. I guess he really does have a sore throat. It's a mystery until we can get him to a doctor.

Now I'll just admit to you that this situation isn't exactly what I had in mind for this week. There are less than 2 weeks until school is out for summer break and that means I have very little "freedom" remaining. My window of opportunity for any type of social life is slipping away minute by minute. I have places I wanna go and people I wanna see before I have my children at home all day every day for several weeks. I have a gift card I need to redeem at a day spa, for heaven's sake! This is seriously cramping my style! Come on, little man, work with me. GO BACK TO SCHOOL!