The Sickies

My house has been an incubator for the sickies this winter.  It reached its peak about a month ago.  Emma came down with a nasty cold - horrible cough, high fever, sleepiness.  After about a week it started to get better...and then I got it.  My favorite part of her having this cold (that sounds so horrible) was the day she asked me, "does the human fire make me breathe better?"  Obviously, I was confused.  Then she pointed to the humidifier.  I died.  A few days later, she got the flu.  Now, this was the first she has EVER had the flu (and coincidentally, this was right after I told a friend that she has never had it...dang).  We went through about two days of throwing up, fevers, laying on the cough, doing lots of laundry....ahem.


Two weeks ago I took her to urgent care.  The flu had gone away, but her cough came back and the fever was still sticking around.  While there, the doctor wanted a urine sample.  I took Emma into the bathroom and attempted to get her to pee in a cup.  That was interesting.  When she finally agreed to try, whatever came out wasn't urine.  And of course there wasn't enough to test.  The nurse looked at the urine, took it straight to the doctor, and the doctor proceeded to tell me I needed to take Emma to the emergency room.  I'm not quite sure what all he said because after he said "kidney failure," I lost my hearing.  


I got her into the car and tried to hold it together.  I called Mitch who offered to drive us to the emergency room.  The whole drive there Emma kept asking if she was going to have to get a shot.  I didn't have the heart to tell her probably.  When we got into the ER, a nurse was taking her vitals.  She asked Emma if she knew how much she weighed.  Emma's response was "40 hours."  Yep, we gotta work on that.


They took us back to her bed and we got settled in.  The doctor came back and I went over her history and why we were there.  He said they would need another urine sample...and if she didn't go...she'd get a catheter.  Eeeeek.  Thankfully, we got her to go after she was bribed with popsicles.  Once again, it was disgusting. When the nurse came to get the sample, she looked at, looked at me and said "Is this her urine?....Wow."  That definitely didn't go over well with me.


Next she had an x-ray done of her chest to make sure she didn't have pneumonia.  She handled that like such a trooper.  She even got a special doll dressed up in a hospital gown for doing so good.  The doll looks exactly like a voodoo doll.  Freaky.  And she named it Ron.  (Good thing we don't know anybody named Ron.)  The x-rays came back perfectly normal.  Now for the sucky part...


Emma's urine came back negative for any bacteria.  She had what they called "amorphous sediment."  Basically, she was severely dehydrated from being so sick.  They wanted to run blood work to find out why she had a fever and hook her up to an IV to get some fluids in her.  My little Emma was the queen of being brave.  Now, if any of you have been around Emma when she gets hurts...it's the end of the world.  I could only imagine what was going to happen when she found out she had to get an IV.  The nurse told Emma that her job was to stay still...and boy, did she do a good job.  She cried out, but didn't move a muscle.  We called the IV a "straw."  It brought tears to my eyes watching how brave she was.  To this day, two weeks later, she's still asking questions about the straw.


Her blood work came back okay except that she had an elevated white blood cell count which means she had an infection - BUT - they couldn't figure out where the infection was.  You could tell that the doctor was debating admitting her, but she decided to discharge Emma on antibiotics and alternating Tylenol and Motrin every four hours until her fever was gone.  The next morning, her fever was gone, of course.


She just finished her antibiotics last week - and the fever is back.  Arrrrgh.  I took her back to the emergency room yesterday.  The ran more tests and determined she just has some kind of infection/fever and I'm supposed to keep giving her Tylenol/Motrin until it's gone.  Right...


She'll be seeing a new pediatric doctor next week.  Hopefully we'll get some answers.