Feee-va in the morning, fever all through the night...

...and contrary to the lyrics, it's not a lovely way to burn.

Yes, our little girl has been suffering a high fever since late Thursday night. We were unsure of it's cause (the doctor had no idea on Friday) but on Saturday Jessica was finally diagnosed with...tonsillitis! She was put on antibiotics on Saturday afternoon, which helped her somewhat. She's been in a lot of pain, has been completely listless and unable or unwilling to eat or drink anything of substance, and she has had very little sleep. By midday today she had started to perk up a little, and her temperature is now thankfully nowhere near the 40+ degrees that it had been on Thursday/Friday. She still has a lot of sleep to catch up on and eating/drinking are obviously still causing her a lot of pain. Poor little thing: such a big illness for such a tiny little girl...

I think that you shouldn't be allowed to come down with any illness that you can't spell. Or at the very least, the number of syllables in the name of the illness should be in direct proportion to your age: if you're only 1, you can have a cold, if you're 2 you can get meas/les, at 3 you can maybe get chic/ken/pox. So, by that reasoning, Jessica isn't allowed to have ton/sil/li/tis until she's 4 (and that ton/sil/lec/to/my will have to wait until she's at least 5, thankyou very much). OK, so that's not a very satisfactory ruling, and I don't wish those nasty things on kids of any age (or spelling capability). But it is very, very difficult to watch and hear your child in any sort of pain, let alone protracted pain that leaves her absolutely exhausted. I'd love to take that pain for her of course, and you'd naturally do it in a heartbeat, but that option's not in the rules yet either.

So there's no pretty photos or clips tonight: we're all quite exhausted and looking forward to the likelihood that Jessica will be feeling even better again tomorrow. Mel is working in the City tomorrow, so it's my day with Jessica. Looks like it'll be another day of The Wiggles, Play School & Hi-5 DVD's, while we rest on the couch eating ice cream. OK, so there is eventually a small upside, even to nasty big words like Tonsillitis.

Matt