A Rough Time for Our Little Trooper

We've had a bit of a rough time this December, not that Norwalk wasn't fun last year, but Brynn developed pneumonia part way through this month.

At first I just thought it was a cold, and then maybe the flu because she had a bit of a fever, so we were dealing with that for a couple of days and I called the 811 nurses line and they originally told me that we should do home care, but then they called me back and said I should take her in in case there was something going on with her lungs... she had had a cough which stopped pretty much when she got the fever. I figured I would take her in to the doctor the next day, but by 2am she had a 40 degree (104) fever. Talk about a way to lose years off your life with worry. To the hospital we went. The took her temperature and checked her out and put us in the waiting room. The 2 am doctor told me, yup, it was a fever, but not really a big deal.

Say what??!!?? Isn't 104 where we start brain damage?

But we were told that with little kids they are less concerned with the number and more concerned with how they were acting. Well, I had just given her some children's Tylenol, so she was pretty normal acting because she was high on sugar. I kind of regretted that. Anyway, he sent us home and said that if she starts acting differently or having a hard time breathing we should bring her back in. At 6 am she started gasping for air, and she looked panicked, which took everything I had not to panic too. I had been staying up with her, so I went and woke Mike up and back to the hospital we went. This time, no wait, straight into a room, which I think was almost more worrying. They gave her some children's Advil, which cheered her up almost immediately (go sugar) and dropped her temperature to normal for the first time in 4 days, but she was still gasping. For me it was time to call in the Oma. Brynn wouldn't go to anyone else and I needed the moral support because Mike had to head to work at some point. After about an hour she slowed her breathing and we had to take her in for chest x-rays. The results of the chest x-rays, well, no pneumonia, so go home and rotate between children's Advil and Tylenol.

Argh. That doesn't really help, after all, that's only treating a symptom. STRESS!!! Oh, and also, sometimes it can be hard to spot pneumonia in little kids, so as long as she has a fever take her into the doctor every day. Argh.

The next day she still had a fever and we went into our family doctor. She called over to the hospital and got the reports, and the report says she does have pneumonia. Huh? I told our doctor that we were told by the ER doctor that she doesn't. Apparently the report from the radiologist says that she does. Geez. Oh, and she has a bit of an ear infection from all this illness. But the hospital didn't run any labs so we don't know if it is bacterial or not, or if she has the flu or not and it's Dec 23 around noon, so there is no way outside the hospital to get any tests done, so she prescribed antibiotics for the pneumonia, but also the ear infection, so if it is not bacterial, it will at least get rid of the ear infection and her temperature should be gone by tomorrow.

So now, we are rotating, Advil every 8 hours, Antibiotics every 12 and Tylenol if the Advil wears off before the 8 hours. We had a decent temperature / medication chart going. Tylenol only seemed to knock it down a degree or two, but the Advil was really effective. Poor Bean though, none of this stuff is fun to take (the pharmacist even said the antibiotics were really nasty tasting) and she was getting a lot of medicine, not sleeping very well and feeling crummy. She's at the age though where we were able to sort of explain that the medicine will help her feel better, and then say see, you feel better because of the medicine during the Advil breaks in her temperature, so she stopped fighting us on the medication and was really brave... right now she just rotates between saying it's icky and it's nasty, which it is.

So I went to work on Christmas eve because her fever seemed to have gone away and I was hoping things were looking up, but Mike informed me that it came back and was up at 40 again, so we still needed all the medications and to monitor her continuously. 5 days with a fever, eek. On the upside, there was a small break in medication and fever for her, but she was starting to look wiped out... little pale baby with dark circles under her eyes, but good enough to head to Duncan for more Oma reinforcements. While there we kept her on the medication schedule and over the next two days we were able to stop giving her Tylenol and able to stretch out the Advil to every 16 hours, then finally on Saturday, one week from the start of the fever, it was gone.

I have to say I don't think I've ever worried about someone for so long, particularly since she can't explain how she feels quite yet, just that she was hot and not happy. So now we are just finishing off the antibiotics, which are still icky and nasty and give her diarrhea, but the upside for her is she gets lots of bananas, which she loves, but in big doses normally cause constipation.

I guess there is always an upside in there somewhere, and of course she's feeling a lot better. A few more days of antibiotics and hopefully she'll be all better.

:)