(written 12/31/2008)
Today’s saga involves documentation of 2 weeks (from hell) in the life of our little family. We were SICK.
(Now it is much later, but I will try to re-call. Because this really was a stunning stretch of ick.)
July 04, 2008 While we were preparing to go to my cousin’s cabin for the annual booya celebration, F’s eye looked. . . pink I took her to urgent care that morning and said that it seemed like she had a cold in the eye. I laughed saying, is that even possible? And Dr. UrgentCare said seriously, Yes, It is. There is bacterial pink-eye and viral pink-eye. Bacterial is goopy and very contagious. Viral is part of a cold and not so contagious. I’ll give you eye-drops. She also said a bunch of other things, some fairly conflicting with each other. At one point, I wondered if she was even a real doctor, because the name on her tag didn’t match the name on the prescription that she wrote for F. But like a good sheep, I didn’t ask any forward-seeming questions.
And off to the cabin we go, spreading pink-eye along the way. Not really, we didn’t, though some of my cousins threw us horrified looks while whispering, Pink eye? Isn’t that *really* contagious?
We had a fun day and went back to my parent’s cabin. Then K got a fever. Well, fevers are a dime a dozen in our family these days. Tylenol and to bed. I was tempted for a minute though to just go home.
While at the cabin, my own right eye started to itch and burn. Must be pink-eye I thought, or the beginning of a stye. I do have a lot of eye problems. Deep sigh. The stye grows. And grows. By July 17, I am going on a chh weekend with my friends. We go to pick up Ann at the airport. She can’t even say hello because she is hooting and hollering at my eye. It really did get big. And red. And swollen. Looking back, I’m pretty sure I had cellulitis or some rather advanced infection. But there was no way a little eye infection (or possible permanent eye damage) was going to prevent me from the beloved chh weekend. As I mentioned, I get a lot of styes. I assumed it would eventually go away. It didn’t. The swelling did go down, but even today, December 31, 2008, I still have a red patch on my right eyelid. The first doctor I saw gave me antiobiotics. The second said it would likely never go away; I would need to have it cut out by an opthamologist. Having high deductible health insurance I have so far opted out of that; I don’t want to pay for it.
Then later in July, or maybe August, I woke up with a burning throbbing ear. I tried to sleep through it, but damm it hurt. All day it hurt. I finally called nurseline at 3pm. Of course she said it was probably an ear infection, as I suspected myself. But then she said I should be seen so that I don’t do permanent damage to my ear. And so, in spite of my usual high-deductible reluctance, I pack up Kentucky and Fried and head off to Urgent Care. The doctor comes into the room and says, So which kid has the ear infection? He laughed when I said it was me. A classic case, a perfect case, a text-book ear infection. Antibiotics and home.
July 28 – Aug 01 Then F got fevery and it lasted for 3 days. Nurseline says: A baby fever for more than 3 days warrants a trip to the clinic. Off we go. Doctor looks here and there and says there are spots at the back of her throat. Most likely hand/foot/mouth. Nothing to be done about it, but come back if the fever doesn’t break in a couple of days. Well in a couple of days we were due to travel to Duluth for a folk festival type thing. I wasn’t sure about going with a fever-baby. But against my better judgement, I swallowed my concerns and nerves and anxious everything, and we went. Which led to . . . . .
August 03 We went to the folk-y thing and F’s fever broke. And darned if it didn’t break so hard she started to feel cold. And she wasn’t drinking much. And she wasn’t peeing much. Like the fun party-girl I am, I started taking her around to everyone I knew and asking if she felt cold or if her soft-spot seemed indented. Being that everyone else there was drinking and there to, you know, have a good time, no one really validated my concerns. I called the nurseline about 5 times. Each time they said that feeling cold wouldn’t be related to dehydration; don’t be concerned; just try to get her to drink something. Well, she wouldn’t and she still wasn’t peeing. My sister-in-law and I took all 4 kids back to their place and T stayed at the festivus for an overnight. (Our ride home was a whole other blog-worthy saga; for later.) When we got home and got kids 1, 2, 3, in bed I took F’s temp just for kicks. It was 94.4 axillary. We took it again, then pulled out the big guns and did a reverse-temp taking if you know what I mean. I have never done that, ever. That temp was 95.4. I freaked. I called nurseline yet again. This gentleman was not concerned at all, the on-call doc was not concerned at all. Nurse-man said, “Wrap her up and let her sleep. Don’t take her temp again until the morning. Don’t go dragging her into . . . I mean don’t take her into the E.R. Just wait until morning.” All I wanted to know from him was HOW LOW IS TOO LOW? At what temp is there damage to the body. I know that 105 can do possible damage on the high-end. WHAT IS THE LOW-END LIMIT?? He gave me this speech: “It isn’t how high or low the temp is. You could have a slight high or low temp and be very very sick. Or you could have an extremely high or low temp and be not so sick.” Suffice it to say I was very very very pissed off and worried and pissed off. So sister-in-law and I try to decide what to do. God bless her, she stuck with me throughout. I finally laid down with F. At 5 in the morning the temp was still 95.something so I called the nurseline again. I mentioned that she still hadn’t peed (now about 15 hours). He said, well you didn’t mention that before. You should take her in. I waffled for a bit longer and took her in. Of course she was fine, her temp was fine, and I was a little embarrassed but just glad to have my worry alleviated. But here is the moral of the story. One, he said don’t worry unless she hadn’t peed in another 8 hours. So we have gone from 8-hrs to 15 hrs to 24 hrs of no pee is still ok. Don’t worry. Two, dehydration can cause a low body temp. As the body is dealing with the dehydration, it is routing resources to vital organs. Temp goes down. Dehydration IS RELATED to low body temp. Listen up nurseline nurses. Three, 93degrees (oh gosh I’m not sure if 93 was the number now), but he gave me a number that is the lower limit for body temp. Again, THAT is what I had been asking for Nurse-man.
August 04 – 08 Being the fair-minded egalitarians that we are, it’s only fitting that K should then develop a high fever illness. He was staying at my parents for some reason. In August? Not sure why, but I know he was there for this bout. T and I had tickets to los lobos at the zoo. I called my parents to see how K was and he had a fever of . . . . 104. Again, I swallowed my nervous everything and decided to go to the concert. It was good. In the following days, his temp outperformed itself again and again, rising to the 105s for a couple of days. I phoned the nurseline over and over. She said, as long as it goes down with Tylenol, as long as he is acting mostly normal, as long as he is peeing, as long as his neck doesn’t hurt, he is fine. And so I waited and waited and waited. At one point he vomited a soft white log of congealed milk because that was all he’d been ingesting. Apparently motrin is hard on a guy’s stomach. We switched back to Tylenol. And. . . . he survived.
That was the end of our summer travails with the sicknesses. Starting daycare in May really did a number on us. We had a month or 2 of health and now we’re back in it. Let’s say that will be yet another post. This one has reached a gigantuan proportion that even I could not have predicted.
