Our Night in the ER

The thermometer read 104.2 when we took the babe's temperature last night at 1:20 am. That's definitely a fever I thought to myself in a panicked way. My husband and I agreed we needed to do something. Fast.

Knowing the pediatrician's answering service may not be as quick as we wanted, we called the Blue Cross Blue Shield (our health insurance company) 24 hour nurse line. Within a minute we were talking to a calm and collected nurse who walked us though a series of questions. Her advice was to get the babe to a doctor within the next few hours.

Adrenalin mixed with fear is a funny thing. I had been sleeping for 2 hours and was able to kick into high gear when I realized we had a problem. My husband and I got dressed, gathered what we thought were necessities (you never know how long you'll be at an ER), and packed the babe into the car. Off to the Children's Hospital we went.

I'll spare you the play by play, but the 3 hour trip involved vomiting, screaming, lots of temperature taking, ear checking, heart checking, a catheter to extract urine to run a urinary tract infection (UTI) test, some more screaming and wailing, and a very hot, sweaty and exhausted little girl. They saw us immediately and kept the show moving right along. The longest part was waiting for the UTI results (negative), which took about an hour (we sat in a hallway as there was a woman talking to a police officer in the small and badly lit waiting room). We were so relieved when the doctor told us the babe had an upper respiratory infection. She'd just need plenty of rest and fluids. We can handle that.

We drove through the deserted streets of DC grateful we were able to go home. The babe was asleep by 5:30 am, and her parents were asleep soon after. We're now having a slow exhausted day (it's after 3:00 pm and the babe and I are both still in pajamas). The babe is tired, snotty and has another eye infection. She's definitely off the social circuit for a while.

I've been so bad at writing and have been feeling quite guilty. I can't even claim I have a blog if I don't write in it! I'll try harder to keep the updates coming as I have a number of stories from our Christmas holidays I can share. There's also the whole peanut and dairy allergy diagnosis we just confirmed last week.

Happy New Year everyone. A votre sante.