Only July 31, I was all set to post that Alexa had made it a whole year without any hospital admissions. In fact, she made it a whole year without any ER visits at all! Crazy! When you averaged at least one ER visit a month, going a whole year is a huge celebration!
However, the night before this, she got ridiculously bad abdominal pains accompanied by one random vomit. Oddly enough, it must have been one of those 18 hour bugs, because quickly she was back to her busy happy self....
ER averted....yes! However, I thought posting the year milestone, might be too much of a jinx to ourselves and so I let that milestone go quietly by, celebrating to myself and thanking the Lord for the amazing year of health he has granted Alexa.
Fast froward to this week....
On Friday afternoon, Alexa came to me and said she was cold--it was 30 degrees outside (celcius). She was tired and wanted to nap--alexa stopped napping a year ago. I knew something was up....felt her head and knew she had a fever....
Mild panic set in as I tried to gather my thoughts, thermometers, and fever relief medications....
It has been over a year since I went through all this with the pharmacists...
before transplant she could have advil and not tylenol, now she can have tylenol and not advil...Right? Or was it the other way around? Crap
And what dose does she get again? Crap, crap!
How high does her fever have to be before I call the on-call? Damn it! I can't remember anymore...
And it is the Friday afternoon before a long weekend, pediatrician is gone, her nurses are gone, and the little transplant duotang that I once carried around EVERYWHERE in anticipation of this day, has slowly over the year become buried somewhere in my desk under a pile of bills and other paperwork. Crap, Crap, Crap!
I placed a call anyhow, and because it was the Friday afternoon, of course, they were incredibly busy and took quite a long time to return my call.
In the meantime, I found my trusty duotang, gave her the correct dosage of the correct medication (by the way, I had it right initially!). Alexa was soundly sleeping and I was gaining back the confidence in my ability to handle this. After all, it was JUST a fever!
But when you have a transplant child, a fever is never "just a fever".
Our doctor called us back, hears the temperature and tells us to get our behinds to the ER....Really?
So off to the ER we went, putting an end to our 13 month streak.
I do have to say though, as far as ER visits go, this once was one of the better ones. Successful IV after one attempt and one more successful stick for blood( it was too much to get from the IV).
They ran numerous blood test and cultures. Alexa got a round of IV fluids, they started her on antibiotics in case it was bacterial and not a viral infection, and 3.25 hours later, we were discharged.
With continued tylenol and the antibiotics, she bounced back quite quickly. The next day, apart from less energy than normal and a rash that she developed on her torso, she was doing well.
Her throat swab came back positive for a bacterial infection, so she will continue her course of antibiotics for the full 10 days. Tomorrow is the first day of school here. She will be absent tomorrow. The doctors want to make sure she has had enough days of antibiotics under her to ensure she is not passing the infection to the other kids.
This makes me sadder than it does her!
I guess our "first day of grade 1" pictures will have to wait until Wednesday.
