It really started on Saturday. Charis came down with a fever with no other obvious symptoms, and the fever just kept going up. It spiked that day at 104.2, and she was doing her best impression of a dishrag. Since she didn’t have other symptoms, we just did our best to watch her and keep her relatively comfortable for the day. When the fever was still high Sunday morning I decided to take her to an urgent care place. There they found an ear infection in one side, the beginnings of another ear infection on the other side, and a probable sinus infection because mucous from her nose had started to be tinged with blood. Joy. So she was put on Zithromax, a five day antibiotic.
What they neglected to tell me was that she might not show signs of improvement until near the end of her antibiotics course.
Monday: Charis still isn’t herself and her fever is still high. She won’t eat anything, but she’s drinking well.
Tuesday: Charis still has a high fever, though she’s starting to perk up a little bit and I don’t have to hold her every single minute… just every other minute. I call the doctor to ask if maybe she needs a different medicine. They say to watch her for one more day. The poor child’s fever is at 103.7 and she’s still not eating.
Wednesday: Hey, the fever seems a little lower. It’s reading at about 100.3. Wow… that’s the lowest it’s been since it started. Charis eats some cheerios for breakfast. I decide to take Charis and Branwen outside to play to give them some good, healthy sunshine.
This is where we have to switch tracks a bit. Charis was doing better, so it was Branwen’s turn to get in on the action of making her mother’s life dramatic.
After we had been out for several minutes and I had gotten a chance to trim some bushes, taking advantage of the nice weather, we saw that a neighbor across the street had come outside with her own children to play. Some of her kids (she has eight of them) are close in age to ours, and they enjoy playing together. She asked if we wanted to come over, so we went ahead across the street to play. While we were there, she happened to mention that this was the day they were accepting registrations at the local elementary school. Hello??? I had called a month or so ago and they had said to watch the local paper to find out what day, so I had and I hadn’t seen anything. Aargh! She offered to give me the list of required papers to take with me to register Alexis for first grade, so I grabbed Charis and went to the door of her house. At the door I turned around and told Branwen, who was sitting on a tricycle on the sidewalk, that I was going in for just a minute to get something from our neighbor and she could come in if she wanted to, then I went inside.
Our neighbor has a storm door with a full glass front, so I had a good view of outside while I was in the house. I stepped away from the door for a minute (and I swear that’s all it was!) while I talked to my neighbor, and when I looked back our the door, Branwen was gone. At first I thought maybe she was just out of my range of vision, so I stepped closer to the door so I could see better. There was the tricycle… no Branwen. So in the middle of a sentence to my neighbor, I said, “I can’t see Branwen… hold on,” and I stuck my head out the door. No Branwen.
That’s when I started to panic. Branwen isn’t a kid to just wander off by herself. She can be pretty strong willed and independent in some ways, but she’s not into taking adventures alone… she wants company. My neighbor saw me start to tense up and she immediately enlisted her teenage daughter (who’s home schooled and was home) to watch the younger kids while we went out searching. We headed off in different directions and commenced running around the neighborhood yelling for Branwen. With each turn I took I panicked more. I figured that the only explanation was that someone had driven up in a car and snatched her away.
I had called Joel and was just running back to the house to call 911 when our neighbor’s teenage daughter stepped outside and said she was sure she had heard Branwen’s voice somewhere. She listened for a second and said she thought it was coming from the neighbor’s house.
I ran up to the door, knocked a couple of times, then opened the door. There in front of me was my beautiful three year old, almost as panicked as I was, with tears streaming down her cheeks.
Here’s what had happened: Branwen had been looking straight at me when I told her she could come in, but she hadn’t noted which house it was. This is a row of townhouses, so it can be fairly easy to mix them up. She decided right after I said that that she wanted to come in, too, but she went to the wrong door. It just so happened that the house next door contained a sleeping mother who worked night shift (and either sleeps very soundly or uses ear plugs), and the young teenage daughter who lives there had forgotten to lock the door when she left for school. Thus, the door was unlocked and Branwen went in, but she couldn’t find anyone and no one heard her crying for a while. By the time I found her, we were both a mess. It took me quite a while to calm down completely, and for the rest of the day I was exhausted.
I did manage to get Alexis’ registration started, though.
Thursday: Charis’ fever finally seems to be gone, but her nose is running excessively and she’s got a terrible sounding, though not frequent, cough. I realize that I already have her 18 month appointment scheduled for Friday, so I call the doctor to make sure that an ear re-check is noted on the appointment schedule. That’s when I hear about Zithromax often taking until the fourth day or so to make marked improvements. 😛 Great. Thanks. I know if I had gone to this doctor first instead of urgent care I would have already known this… or, better yet, they would have prescribed something that worked faster. Anyway, appointment is all set for Friday afternoon and everything’s hunky dory.
Thursday Night: Charis was coughing a good bit and it was waking her up, so Joel brought her upstairs and I held her upright for a bit. That seemed to help a lot, and after maybe 15 minutes to a half hour, Joel was able to return her to her bed. I didn’t feel like I slept after that, but I’m sure I did. Around 2 AM, I was suddenly wide awake and hearing a child gasping for breath over our baby monitor. I said, “Joel! I don’t think she can breathe!” and Joel was out of bed immediately and running down the stairs. He ran into the girls’ room, and I heard him say in a surprised voice, “It’s Branwen!”
So he carried Branwen upstairs and we struggled to give her Albuterol, but she was fighting us for some reason… probably just because she was panicking and may not have been fully awake. I wasn’t sure how much of the Albuterol had gotten in and she still was having severe trouble breathing, so we called 911. We went downstairs with her, and by the time the ambulance arrived I was noticing a slight improvement in her breathing. The paramedic in charge at first thought it was an asthma attack, but as he listened to her he decided that it was a severe case of croup. They gave her oxygen and saline mist, and she started to clear up nicely. After making sure that her oxygen levels were staying up, they said we could take her in to the hospital to see if she needed an antibiotic since she very likely had some kind of infection with this, or we could watch her for the night and take her in to our regular doctor the next day. I opted to watch her because she sounded so much better, and the paramedics went on their way. Thank God for paramedics!
Branwen slept in our bed the rest of the night. We put a cool mist humidifier in our room and had her propped on a couple of poofy pillows and she did all right other than some coughing. Of course, I was on high alert, not helped by the fact that Charis was coughing, too. Joel slept on a twin bed in the nursery so that we would actually get some sleep. Three in our bed is a bit much and ends up being rather uncomfortable.
Friday: We’re tired. Or at least I am. Branwen and Charis slept in, Alexis slept through it all, so that leaves me and Joel. I think we’ll make it through the day. I called the pediatrician’s office and got an appointment for Branwen right before Charis’ appointment, so I can take them both in together this afternoon. Of course, both girls seem pretty good today. Charis’ nose is still running and that wet cough is still there occasionally, but the fever hasn’t come back and she’s very playful. Branwen seems fine with a very infrequent cough, but chances are she’ll seem sick again tonight if we treat her like she’s ok. I’m guessing we’ll just have to have the cool mist humidifier in her room and prop her up and she’ll probably be fine, but we’ll see what the doctor says.
And now maybe I can shower before I give them any lunch. We had such a late breakfast that it would be pointless to try to feed them anything else right now.
Thank God it’s Friday!!!