We are exhausted.
Tuesday afternoon, when I went to pick Shelby up after her nap, I noticed she was super warm. Warmer than usual after someone has been sleeping. So I took her temperature. 102.2. I gave her some Tylenol and hoped the fever would go down. It didn't. It just kept going up and up, til it peaked at 104.5. Finally, at 4 am, after a blessing, lots of crying and restlessness, we decided to take Shelby to the ER. That is where we met the meanest doctor on the face of the planet.
After waiting a ridiculous amount of time (considering we were the only people in the ER), the doctor finally came in to see us. This doctor apparently never heard the Primary song "Smiles", because he had a permanent scowl on his face. He said he was going to check Shelby out and lunged at her. Yes, he really did lunge. Shelby jumped back to me and started whimpering. I calmly started to explain to her that the doctor was going to look in her ears, and that it would be ok, when Mean Doctor cut me off and told me to hold her arms. "No", I replied. "If you just explain to her what you are doing she will let you do it". "Ma'am", he said in his foreign accent, "let me do my job. Hold her arms." And so began the kicking and screaming.
Mean Doctor said Shelby's ears and lungs were ok, and her throat was a bit red. He simply sent us home with an antibiotic.
The next day, Shelby's fever broke around noon. "Hooray!", I thought. I could not go through another night of that. Well, I jinxed myself. Sure enough, around 5 PM, her temperature started rising. Again, Jeremy gave her a blessing, she cried, we gave her a bath, etc. Her fever finally spiked at 104.9.
So I took her to her pediatrician today. She calmly showed Shelby the otoscope and, without Shelby moving one muscle or uttering one whimper, checked Shelby's ears, nose, and throat. Then she listened to her breathe. She said she wanted to order a chest x-ray and urine sample. (Getting a urine sample from a baby is fun stuff, let me tell you. She was so dehydrated that after an hour of waiting, checking the urine bag, and waiting some more, I finally stuck her hand in warm water and that did the trick.) After everything came back, we got the diagnosis: pneumonia and a possible bladder infection (sample is going to the lab for further test).
Hey Mean Doctor, maybe I don't have an M.D., but I know my own daughter. I know that she hates to be held down, and that if you try to hold her down, she will scream so loudly it will pierce your eardrums. Maybe that is why you couldn't hear the crackling in her chest and accurately diagnose her. So maybe next time, Mean Doctor, you could come down off your high horse and listen to what the mother is trying to tell you.
Hopefully the new antibiotics will help. So far she is sleeping and her fever is down, so that is much better than the past two nights. We are going back for a follow-up on Tuesday to make sure it will be ok for us to fly out to Utah that night. I sure don't want to take a sick child to be around 13 cousins, all of whom are 7 and under.
