Recently my youngest son who is almost 4 yrs old fell ill with a cold/flu. It was most likely due to playing out in the cold for too long over these past winter days. His fever lasted about 2 days and peaked to 104-105 degrees last night. My wife and I were scared and not sure what todo. My son has never been good about taking childrens tylenol or motrin as we always throws it right back up so we didn't have a way to bring his fever down really.
But from sound advice that I had recently gained from the anarcho/veagan crowd, I learned that the fever is the body's way of fighting off the virus and it is ok to let nature take its course and allow the body to fight. So I stuck by this principle for the most part but did try to give him some motrin around day 1.5 which he puked up of course. And after last night at the peak I told my wife that there is nothing we can do short of running him to the emergency room, or just let the fever take its course and fight the virus.
We were scared and nervous and not knowing what to do but after sticking to the advice that I had learned over the recent past through research and watching videos, I reluctantly did nothing and watched closely through the night over my son praying it would work out. It was a rough night sleep to say lightly, but after tossing and turning, moaning and groaning off and on we were able to get decent rest and low and behold this morning when we woke up the fever was gone and my son was feeling better. He is still a little hung-over from the rough past couple days but is 95% back to normal and his old self again.
I am so thankful we did not take him to the pediatrician like we always used to panic and do, and try to force fever reducer medicine down him everytime he got sick. So from experience I can say that the advice was very sound, and everyone situation is different of course, but if you have sick child running a small-medium fever, then just let it be and keep over-the-counter medicines out of the picture if you can help it.
