our little boy has been sick, sick, sick, sick. so very sick.
it all started last friday afternoon (the 18th).
john was out of town for work...and e was driving me crazy.
so i put him down for a nap early and noticed he felt warm.
took his temp...103. dang.
i rarely give my kiddos tylenol or motrin or any of that stuff.
usually if they have a fever, it's a low grade one so i just let the fever do its thing. (low grade fevers are usually a good thing...high fevers, like e's was, aren't so good)
i canceled our evening plans and hoped he'd feel better in the morning.
i ended up calling the after hours doctor at 11.30pm because e's fever had now reached 104.7 and the tylenol wasn't doing a thing to lower it.
after some kindly words from the on-call pediatrician, i pulled him into bed with me (john wouldn't be home until the morning) and tried to sleep.
of course, i couldn't sleep.
around five am, i felt his head and in my delirium, it felt cool. only then was i able to sleep until lucy woke up at eight to nurse.
i honestly think God made elijah's head feel cool to me so i could get some sleep because when i woke up in the morning, he was as hot as ever.
we waited for john to get home, then took him in to the saturday clinic.
after an initial exam, the ped really didn't see any huge problem until i told her how high his fever had gotten the night before. she ordered blood work (not fun when the nurse couldn't find his poor little vein!) and it looked like he was getting a bacterial infection.
antibiotics for elijah-man.
fast forward to midnight saturday night/sunday morning. john and i are startled out of sleep by deep, hacking coughs between shallow, labored breaths. scary. and really not cool.
he was still running a super high fever (though the motrin helped some) and now he couldn't breathe? we decided to take him to the e.r.
john took him while i waited at home with lucy. (we didn't want to expose her to whatever nasties were waiting in the emergency room. but it was torture for me staying at home. another sleepless, prayer-filled night.)
john and elijah got home around 2.30am with the news that elijah most likely had the H1N1 virus, more commonly known as the swine flu. we had a prescription for tamiflu, an anti-viral medication.
he took that along with the broad spectrum antibiotic prescribed to him at the clinic until wednesday when i called his pediatrician because he STILL had a fairly high fever (101-102) and that lovely, hacking cough.
she got him an appointment that morning. the pediatrician that saw him (his usual one was called out) was so very helpful. she ordered a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia and just really listened to our concerns. so refreshing in a pediatrician!
e got the x-rays done (much less traumatizing than the blood draw!) and we waited for the results.
we took him in on thursday morning and received the diagnosis that he most likely had the H1N1 virus with a secondary infection of walking pneumonia. fun, right? poor guy.
so...he was prescribed a different antibiotic to help rid his body of the pneumonia. friday morning (the 25), a full week after his first signs of illness, he was fever-free. we had a fairly normal weekend, except he was a bit more tired than usual, still coughing and still hadn't quite got his appetite back. then sunday night (last night), lucy woke up to nurse burning up with fever. i was in tears, simply because i was so exhausted from the previous week's drama and interrupted nights. but, since we caught it early, she's already on the medication. her fever is controlled by infant tylenol (something that elijah's wasn't) and her cough doesn't interfere with her breathing like elijah's did. she's mostly her normal happy self; just a bit more cranky around naptime than usual. as long as she keeps nursing, i'm not too worried about her...she'll pull through!
now...i've just got to get caught up on some sleep and some housework. poor john hasn't had a home cooked meal in ten days! but not to worry, i've got seafood chowder simmering downstairs as i type.
throughout this whole ordeal, i've been so blessed and amazed by the power of prayer. God is so good, even when you're holding your baby, wondering why this is happening to your little one. He is good, all the time, ALL the time.
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