Just A Bug

The last couple of years have been hard for all of us and no one has been unaffected by the pandemic. One of the lasting affects for me, as a parent, has been anxiety around my daughter’s health.
When I was a child, I used to get loads of bugs and had a fair amount of time off school because of them, but they rarely caused my parents any great concern. However, as an adult I feel I cannot shake the worry each time my daughter gets unwell.
With Covid, a cough may not just be a cough and with the increase in Strep A & Scarlet Fever, what seems to be just a cold might not be. It is difficult not to be affected by the tragic stories on the news of children who lost their precious young lives to these illnesses.
I struggle with whether its right or wrong to send her to school. Whether I should take her to the doctor (or nurse) to make sure it’s not something worse.
It doesn’t help she can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to all these bugs. In the last year, she has needed antibiotics twice – once for a chest infection, another time for tonsillitis – and we’ve ended up at Children’s A&E to get her checked out for dehydration after a particularly nasty sickness bug. Even over Christmas, she was ill and had a high temperature, which needed monitoring.
All of this has mounted up to an, at times overwhelming, anxiety over her health and my mind whirring every time she catches a cough or sniffle. This poem I wrote, I hope, reflects this anxious state I often find myself in.

Just A Bug

It’s just a bug,
but how can we tell?
It’s just a cough,
but should we test?
She’s just under the weather
but is it the lull before the storm?
Do I keep her off school
so as not to spread?
Do I take her to the doctor
so they can check?
Their time is precious
but so is she.
Or is it just a bug
like the ones we used to get,
when we were that young
– when there were no masks
– when there were no lockdowns.
It’s just a bug
and yet
the news is telling us
there’s another new threat,
taking our young ones
and leaving families bereft.
It won’t happen to us,
will it?
It can’t happen to us,
can it?
It’s just a bug,
but is it?
Is it
just a bug?