Sick of summer

So here we are on the home stretch of summer, tantalizingly close to the start of school. The kids have been healthy and active through the day-camp months, suffering nothing much more than a bad sunburn. And now, on this very week when illness will be of a maximum inconvenience, of course they're sick. My son was diagnosed with strep throat on Monday after a long whining weekend of high fever and careful swallowing. He's dosed with antibiotics and cold medicine now, and feeling pretty perky. As for me, I'm still recovering from the frustration and annoyance of waiting an hour and 45 minutes in the pediatrician's office for a two-second throat swab.

My daughter, meanwhile, has one of those strangely mutating colds that sometimes seem to have dire respiratory repercussions and sometimes fade away entirely, usually when there's something she wants to do. She now does pretty much want to go to school on Thursday -- or rather, she doesn't want to miss the first day and all the important instructions that will be given out -- and so with luck that means the cold will scram by then. My deepest fear is that she'll catch her brother's strep just past the point in which I can give her 24 hours worth of antibiotics and still send her to school. Worse still, I'll have to go back to the pediatrician. Do you suppose the nurses have forgotten yet the way I stuck my head out of the examining room door at about the hour and 15 minute mark and made a bit of a scene? They wouldn't just stick us somewhere and forget us for good this time, would they? Should I bring flowers?