The rest of the story

At 8 p.m. on Sunday night, we got a call from the emergency room. They had finally processed the swab they took from Liam on Friday night 'as a precaution' and were calling to let us know that he has strep throat, the rash from earlier in the week was likely scarlet fever, and that he needed to get onto some penicillin, pronto.

(And yes, I did feel a little smug, because scarlet fever had been my very first thought!)

So off we went to the pharmacy, where we got a bottle of pills and started Liam on them morning, noon and night. He had one at breakfast Monday morning and I packed one with his lunch on Monday and slipped a note to his teacher into his bag, letting her know what the pill was and establishing its credibility.

At about 9:10 a.m. (i.e. pretty much right after Liam had taken off his coat and given the note to his teacher) I got a phone call from the vice principal of the school. Liam was in the office with his pill, having been sent there by the teacher upon discovery of the note. The vice principal did one of those things where they try to tell you something without coming right out and saying it, and we had to go in circles a few times before I was really sure that I understood the message, but it turns out that you cannot let the school administration know that your kid is on medication. If you do this then you need your doctor to fill out a form and to go through a bunch of legal hoopla. However, if you just pack your child something in his lunch - nudge nudge, wink wink - and you let your child have it without telling the teacher what is going on, then everything is fine.

Silly me - here I was specifically NOT wanting the teacher to not know what was going on. Well, I guess what I mean is that I didn't want her to only kind of vaguely see Liam with a pill and then jump to the wrong conclusion about what it might be!

So we left it that Liam would continue to bring a pill each day but it would be part of his lunch and the school would essentially turn a blind eye to it. That lasted all of a few hours, until I went into the school to volunteer at Mallory's class party. En route to her classroom I ran into the VP in person. It turns out that there are three children at Liam's school who are allergic to penicillin and as luck would have it, they are all in Grade 1 (though perhaps not Liam's Grade 1).

So the new plan is to leave the pills in the office and have them administer them to Liam for us, since he cannot have the medication in the classroom. So I take it that it's a good thing I alerted the teacher to the fact that Liam had them after all??

I just hope he can get them down now... the first couple of pills went down no problem, but the last couple have involved lots of gagging and needing to bury it in a mouthful of yogurt to do the trick. I cut the ones I sent to school in half for him, hoping that makes it easier. I am pretty sure the vice principal will not have a tub of yogurt on hand for him to make taking them easier so I'm anxious to see how the first one goes.