Wednesday, January 6, 2010

On the 10th day of fever...

Thing 2 has had a fever since December 28th.  I wrote about this in the last post, that she was diagnosed  with Strep on Thursday, New Year's Eve, and we put her on Amoxicillin.  The clinic wasn't open on Saturday, but we took her to the insta-care clinic on Saturday and they confirmed she's dehydrated and I'm an alarmist, that fevers can take 72 hours to come down.  SO THEY SAID.
Then on Sunday evening's medicine dose she gagged on the Amoxicillin - it's awful stuff, and vomitted up her dinner, her motrin, and her antibiotics.  That convinced me we were going back to the doctor the next morning, and finally on Monday we got in to see our real doctor, who actually - get this - listens to me and doesn't make me feel like an idiot.
I know, it's really amazing.
He too was alarmed that her fever hadn't gone down by Saturday, disagreed with the insta care doctor and said yes I should be concerned, and there's obviously something else going on besides strep.  Maybe there's not even strep, as a false positive can happen on a strep test, but testing her again would be a waste of time - if it came back positive it confirms that she does have strep, if it comes back negative it could possibly be a false negative, or it might confirm it was a false positive the first time, or it could mean that the Amoxicillin she took from Thursday to Sunday had done its job.

Since she's still sick, it's better not to ignore the strep test, but to continue with antibiotics, just give her one that isn't so vile.  What he REALLY wanted to do was satisfy everyone's curiosity and do a test to see if she's got a viral infection, which would involve her snorting up some liquid and after it had sloshed around in her festering sinuses, spew it out and analyze it.  Since it's a pretty expensive test, and the treatment for a viral infection is to do nothing, there's not much point in it.
He said since viral infections usually run several days, and since she should have responded within 24 hours to the antibiotic, she should have been better days ago.  Even if she had both an bacterial and viral infection.  But there's not too much to do, maybe it's just a very nasty viral infection...  He said if she's not better by Thursday to bring her back and we'll do some blood work.  If her fever does come down for 24  hours with no tylenol or motrin, she is considered better.
Yesterday I bought a new thermometer. 
Today is Wednesday, her fever is only 101 this morning, and it didn't spike up to 104 or so during the night - I don't think, anyway. She slept through the night so I don't know if it came up, actually, but we'll watch her today and if it doesn't go up, and keeps coming down, we'll call this one licked.  I'd love her to be able to go to school in the morning.

But there is no question that she is sick.  She hardly eats anything, and it's not like she had a lot of spare weight to loose.  She is visibly thinner...  she lays around, she's crabby as a little green apple and she sleeps all afternoon.  I want my little angel back!

Okay, completely unrelated, but I love a photo in a post.

Here's Kelso, right after he got his cone off and came back from the groomer.  Yes, he is every bit as soft and fluffy as he looks.

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