Hug Your Loved Ones: Tis the Season for Sick Kids
I know, I know, I've really fallen off of the consistent blogging bandwagon lately. Life man, life has just gotten crazy! As I'm sure you can tell from the title of today's blog, a lot of that craziness in life and lack of blogging has to do with having sick kids. The past week and a half have just been a crazy health roller coaster for our kiddos!
Two Saturdays ago, Dan had returned home from a week in Amsterdam (to my immense relief), and we were at my niece's second birthday party, having a great time! About an hour after we got home, Eloise felt a bit warm. I took her temperature, and if I remember correctly, it was a high 101, maybe 101.7 or something like that. I know the flu has been going around, so we gave her some Tylenol for the fever and put her to bed, as she was rubbing her eyes and visibly tired.
The next day, she started out with a low grade fever, but was refusing her foods, and some of her bottles as well. She felt warm, so I re-took her temperature several times that day. I think the highest it got was 102.9, so she got some more Tylenol and lots and lots of snuggles. She was throwing up a bit too, so we just covered our couch and myself with towels. We made the decision that night not to send her to daycare the next day, even if she felt better, because 1) It's not responsible and 2) Daycare's policy is that she has to be free of symptoms for 24 hours from the onset, which she wouldn't have been.
Monday morning rolled around, and I stayed home with our little love bug Eloise. She had NO fever at all the rest of the day, and hasn't gotten sick since, either. She woke up from a nice nap that morning grinning from ear to ear, and I even took her grocery shopping later that day, which she absolutely LOVED.
We were happy and relieved that she seemed to only have a mild-ish case of the flu and also SUPER happy that Annie was seemingly free of any illness as well, as she was the toddler tornado that she always is.
Oh we were wrong. We were so so wrong.
Fast forward 2 days to last Wednesday. My parents watch Annie on Wednesdays, and late morning, my mom texted me to say that Annie had a fever or 102 by mouth and was pretty lethargic. She gave her some Tylenol and put her down for a nap, which I was sure would help. I assumed she had the same bug that Eloise had, and that with some fever reducing medicine and rest, she'd be fine the next day. After he nap, her fever hadn't really gone down, so I just asked my mom to strip her down to maybe a shirt and diaper, as that's what we did with Eloise and it helped. I picked Eloise up from daycare, as she had the 2nd 1/2 of her flu shot that afternoon, and was thankful that she was getting it and hoping that we'd be illness free by the next day.
Then I got the call that made my stomach drop. While I was in line to check in at the doctor's office to check Eloise in for her vaccine, my dad called me and said "Hi Babs, Annie just had a little seizure. Mom and I are taking her to the Emergency Room at Blodgett (the hospital less than 5 minutes from where we live) right now." They were on auto pilot and didn't have time to give details other than she was breathing and no longer seizing, so I said I'd call as soon as I got out of Eloise's appointment, which I knew would take fewer than 10 minutes, probably not even 5 minutes. I immediately called Dan after checking in, and started crying, just trying to hold myself together. Dan left work and met my parents at the hospital.
After getting Eloise's shot (which by the way, she barely cried getting, and even started laughing at the nurse before she even left the room), I got to the hospital as fast as I could. It was so heartbreaking to see my biggest baby laying on the bed in the ER, hooked up to and IV and other monitors. She had apparently JUST opened her eyes and was looking around, but it took a good hour after the seizure for that to happen. And she was still pretty much laying there. After about another 30 minutes, she talked a little bit. The first thing she said was "Wee Wee (aka Weezy, aka Eloise) here?" My parents had already taken Eloise back to their house, but we told her that yes, Wee Wee was here. Then we went through pictures of people on my phone, and she named them all off. Very faintly, mind you, but she was totally aware of who everyone was.
A bit later, the Doctor came in and told us that our sweet girl had had a febrile seizure, which are quite common in kids under 5 years old. Her fever came on so suddenly and rose so fast, that her poor body wasn't able to handle it and that's what caused the seizure. The root cause of the fever itself was an ear infection, and we were given a prescription for amoxicillin to give her at home to clear that up. After her fever had gone down from 103.6 to 103.4, and she was cognitively doing fine, they discharged her. We went home, took it easy that evening, and had my parents come over and hang out for a bit after bringing Eloise home. Annie was pretty lethargic for about 45 minutes and then perked up and was talking away, which was SO reassuring.
We kept Annie home from daycare the following day, even though she was almost back to normal. It took several days for her to really recover from the seizure, honestly. She took a lot of naps and was pretty low-key and lethargic for a few days, which I totally expected. That's a lot for a little body to handle.
Exactly a week had gone by, and aside from a persistent dry cough on Tuesday, Annie had pretty much fully recovered! This mama was so happy, as her happy-go-lucky biggest baby was pretty much back to herself. I noticed a small rash on her torso on Tuesday morning, but it was barely visible. She's got a skin condition called pityriasis, which is harmless. It's a rash that you often find on the torso, doesn't bother the person that has it, and is not contagious. Because she's had that before and just has overall sensitive skin, I figured that's what it was. It seemed a bit more pronounced (barely), Tuesday night, so on the safe side, we gave her some Benadryl before bedtime. This also helped her sleep because she was more relaxed and not coughing.
Wednesday morning rolled around and the rash was more pronounced and had spread to her back and was starting to creep up her neck and onto her face. I was somewhat concerned, but it didn't seem to be bothering her, so she went to my parents' house, and I put a call into her Doctor, just in case. I sent a photo, and based on that, her Doctor said it appeared to be viral, and as long as it was not bothering her and she didn't have a fever, there was not much to worry about.
I went about my day until my mom sent me this photo and said the rash was getting worse, and getting worse quickly:
We have enough allergies in our famiy hisotries that in case this was an allergic reaction (though I wasn't sure to what), I called the Doctor's office to get her in. Her office couldn't see her that day, but another office within the group could, so I made the first appointment that I could and my mom (bless her heart, AGAIN, for helping us out), took her in.
The verdict: our peanut is allergic to amoxicillin. Apparently, it's quite common for the reaction not to show until 7 days after starting the medication, and it had been exactly 7 days. We immediately stopped the amoxicillin, and they said if we'd like, we could give Benadryl to her, though it wasn't necessary. Of course, we wanted to speed the process of her recovering along, so gave her a small dose of it before bed, and were confident that it would be clearing up in no time.
WRONG AGAIN. Our kiddo also appears to be allergic to Benadryl. She's had it before when she had hives, but has never had a reaction like this, so I think it's a combination reaction, as my mom has had some like that. When she woke up this morning I thought, OH. MY. GOSH. This poor kid can't catch a break. It was all over her torso, and WAY worse on her face. Needless to say, she won't be getting Benadryl again.
By the time we got to daycare, her face was even worse. Luckily, it's not contagious, and I explained that it is an allergic reaction and that her Doctor's office would be faxing a note as soon as they got in. The Assistant Director was in the room when we got there, and her son had had a similar thing happen from amoxicillin so they were very understanding and just felt bad for her, but still allowed her to stay.
Overall, I think we've nailed down the root cause of our sweet Annie's medical issues over the past week, but I must say, it's been very nerve-wracking on both Dan and I, between the seizure and the allergic reactions. Annabelle is SUCH a trooper, and I'm so glad her demeanor is still happy and loving through all of this.
Both of our kids are getting a lot more hugs and cuddles lately, and we are so thankful that nothing more serious is going on with either one of them. With everything that has happened the past week though, it sure does make us take a step back and really remember what's important and to never take our health or our kids health for granted. Make sure you hugs your loved ones today, you never know when you'll be faced with a scary health situation, or something like it!