How Can You Tell?

So as I referenced on the tweet feed this morning, I’m sick.  Apparently, in his second week at camp, the Monster contracted a cold or something and passed it on to me.

The real problem, though, is trying to figure out when he’s really, actually sick.

I don’t know that there’s really a way to ‘teach’ him to tell us when he’s not feeling well – we’ve never been very good at getting him to express in words something like ‘hurts’ or ‘icky’ or the like when it comes to his own body.  His expressive language isn’t up to the task, certainly, of telling us if he’s feeling feverish or if his throat’s bothering him, and when we ask, we get a very non-useful response.

What I do know is that he was coughing by Friday morning… and that was really about it.  I mean… given how he sleeps, it’s normal for him to wake up sweaty and whatnot (he wraps himself up in his blankets and burrows away into them, regardless of the temperature).  But other than that, he’s seeming entirely normal.

So it comes back to the question of how to tell when he’s sick, as opposed to say just having a temporary environmental reaction to something, or what to do about said sickness.

For the first, I assume we could tell better if there was something generally wrong with him beyond a summer cold.  We’ve had one incident, perhaps, where he was actually feverish, but… this isn’t it.  The thermometer says he’s fine, and that’s our basic gauge for whether or not he’s okay enough to keep doing what he’s doing – so he’s just doing what he’s doing.

For the second, I suppose that really is more a matter of convincing him to take whatever remedy we come up with for what’s wrong with him.  That’s generally medicine, but since we’ve not had to try to get him to take any lately, there’s always that chance that he’d balk at taking it.  I do cross my fingers that when/if he does catch the flu or a worse cold, he won’t put up too much of a fight…

As for me… tea and rest seem to be the order of the day again…

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