Lucky

Our son has had a temperature for the last few days. It's been up and down with assistance from the magical concoctions of paracetamol and ibuprofen.

Last night, the magic wore off and his temperature just couldn't be controlled by our usual means. Cut a long story short, we ended up in hospital overnight.

Luisa and I spent the night catching little pockets of sleep, taking it in turns to sleep sitting up in a visitor chair while the other laid next to our son to try comfort him whilst not getting too close to make him too hot. Hospital staff coming in and out, which isn't a pain point, I'm merely trying to set the scene. When it wasn't hospital staff, Alistair's fever kept jolting him out of what light sleep he was getting which only added to his misery.

So, we barely slept, barely ate, our boy was in pain, we could do nothing more to help him and he was ill for what felt like the millionth time in the last year.

Mix all that together at 3am and your mind may start to race and allow you to think you're being dealt a shit hand.

Then the next day, you take stock of the situation. Sleep can be caught up, food is easily obtained once everything settles down and the hospital staff did a great job allowing us all to go home within 24 hours of being admitted.

While I don't want to make our worries seem less valid than others, other families have to endure a lot worse for a lot longer.

Perspective.