Family: Home Sick No More

When Mom and Dad simply have to be at work, where do their sick children spend the day?

One morning last winter, a first-grader named Elizabeth awoke with a nasty cough. While she took her prescribed asthma medication, her mother reviewed their options. Neither parent could stay home that day. Elizabeth's mother had to be in the lab, and her father was out of town on business. School was risky: although she didn't feel sick and wasn't contagious, Elizabeth sounded sick, and her mother knew from experience that the nurse would probably call for a pickup just before dismissal time.

So Elizabeth and her mother took the only way out: they went to work. Elizabeth sat at her mother's...

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