Dodging Bullets

Took Sam back in to the Dr today as he was running a temp of 102 all weekend and coughing a lot. He had us pretty worried yesterday to the point where I was trying to decide whether or not to take him to the ER last night. But then at 12:30 am I gave him both Tylenol and Motrin and his fever has not spiked since.

There was much excitement at the Dr's office with me hauling him across the medical plaza to get a chest x-ray. De ja vue started to seriously set in of the day about 4 yrs and 1 mo ago that I did this with Gavin. But then I remembered Sam was 1) still drinking and 2) still alert so I tried not to panic. He sat like a rock star for the x-ray.

Back at the Dr's office (where we did another naked weight and he lost another 4 1/2 oz from when we were in 6 days ago) he did not think his lungs looked quite bad enough to be pneumonia, but they didn't look good either. His words "they look crunchy and sound crackly". I don't exactly know how to translate that. They nose swabbed for RSV and flu and Sam protested a LOT. Then they did a neb treatment as the Dr wanted to hear what improvement, if any, it made to his lungs. After warning the nurse that he hated neb treatments, he sat still for 30 seconds before thrashing and flailing like a wild man. Of course the nurse left after 10 seconds thinking he was going to behave. Fortunately a child life specialist came in a blew bubbles to help calm him down.

The treatment didn't help a whole lot, but he also probably inhaled less than half of it. He's on an antibiotic that caused diarrhea within 10 minutes of taking it - so that should make for a fun 10 days! We're on house arrest for a couple days to let him rest and ensure that it does not in fact turn into full blown pneumonia.

All in all, it could be worse. I have a laptop so I can work from home, and a boss and team at work that is understanding. I did start to panic until I heard that it wasn't that bad (my cell's almost out of battery power, I didn't bring his special milk, etc, etc) so I am very glad that my worst case scenario was not realized.

I just can't wait to get through this winter! Since Gavin's bad winter 4 years ago I think he's had about 2 ear infections and 1 case of strep and rarely a sniffly nose. So I am looking forward to some healthiness to come!