Dear Diary,
Today was one of those days. You know the type — moms rushing through the door like their kid is in emergent distress, and what’s the “emergency”? A kid with a fever that just started five minutes ago. Literally. Just before arrival. Didn’t even give it a chance to exist.
No Tylenol. No Motrin. Not even a cool washcloth. Nothing. Straight from “oh wow, he feels a little warm” to “load him up in the car, we’re storming urgent care.”
And then they look at me with this expression like I’ve got the answer sheet to the universe.
“What is it? What’s wrong with him? Why is he hot?”
Ma’am, I don’t know, maybe because his body decided to do the most basic immune response known to mankind.
Meanwhile, the kid? He looks fine. Sitting there swinging his legs, half-smile on his face, doesn’t even look sick. Barely breaks eye contact with his iPad. He’s not writhing. He’s not crying. He’s not miserable. He’s just warm. That’s it.
But Mom is revved up to a 10. Complaining about the wait. “We were in the waiting room forever.”
Translation: twenty minutes. Twenty minutes with your perfectly fine kid with a fever that just started while I’m busy with people who’ve been puking for days, can’t catch their breath, or are actively bleeding all over my floor. But yes, I should’ve dropped all that because you noticed a temperature on the way over.
We swab him, because of course we have to swab him. Flu, COVID, strep, RSV. Guess what? All negative. Because the fever has been alive for less time than it takes to cook a frozen pizza. Nothing has even had a chance to grow yet. These tests aren’t magic! They don’t detect things that haven’t even had a chance to start.
So now the story starts shifting. “Well, he’s been having this off and on for months.”
Oh, really? Because you just said this started on the way here. And now you want it to be a chronic issue? Ma’am, pick a lane. Either it just started or it’s been happening for months. It can’t be both.
Then comes the symptom-creation. “His throat hurts. His stomach hurts. He’s lethargic. He has dry skin on his feet.” I look at the kid. He’s bright-eyed, flipping through TikTok, asking if he can have a sticker. That’s not lethargic. That’s fine. That’s not even fatigue! You’re the one who looks exhausted from working yourself up into this frenzy.
And of course, the million-dollar question: “Can he have antibiotics?”
No! He cannot have antibiotics. Because there’s nothing bacterial here. I’m not handing out amoxicillin like a party favor for a fever that’s younger than a TikTok trend.
I try to explain: fever is the body’s normal response. It doesn’t always mean infection. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes it lasts a day. Sometimes it’s viral. Most of the time, kids handle it fine. What matters is how the child looks, how they’re acting, and if there are red-flag symptoms. Your kid looks like he’s about to ask me for a Happy Meal on the way home.
But of course, that explanation doesn’t go over well. I get the look — the “you’re hiding something from me” look. Like I’ve got a secret diagnosis written down somewhere that I just don’t want to share. Nope. No conspiracy here. Just a healthy kid with a fever that barely clocked in before you raced over here.
So I give the same instructions I always give:
- Give Tylenol or ibuprofen as needed.
- Push fluids.
- Rest.
- Watch and wait.
- Follow up if things actually get worse.
She stares at me like I just told her to ignore her child completely. No, I’m telling you to parent. Parenting includes waiting longer than three minutes before demanding the full infectious disease workup.
I swear, if I had a sign on the wall that said “Fever less than 30 minutes old: Please wait before sprinting to urgent care”it would save me hours of my life. But nobody would read it. Or they’d read it and still come in. Because “what if it’s something serious?”
Newsflash: Sure, some emergencies can come on out of nowhere. But a fever that started five minutes ago, with a kid who’s sitting here chill as can be? That’s not it.
The kicker? I’ll probably get a call later tonight. “He still has a fever.” Yeah. That’s what fevers do. Most viral fevers hang around a few days, not five minutes.You don’t call me every time the thermometer lights up. You treat it, you monitor it, and you use common sense.
Dear Diary, I can handle a lot. Coughs, colds, rashes, weird injuries, people who wait way too long to get checked out. But this? The fever-that-just-started panic? It’s the repeat offender of urgent care.
It’s like being asked to solve a mystery when the crime hasn’t even happened yet.
Today’s diagnosis?
Kid: perfectly fine.
Mom: the actual problem.
Signing off before the next “emergency” rolls in.
