We went to my Sister-in-law’s wedding two weekends ago. On the way home from Maine Susan noticed that Laura was hot. By Monday morning she was at 103 and home from daycare. By Tuesday she was off to the doctor’s and home with a diagnosis of an ear/sinus infection and a prescription for antibiotics. By Thursday she was back to the doctor with a 103 fever that wasn’t reacting to the antibiotics, a stomach ravaged (probably) by said antibiotic, and no appetite. From there she was headed straight to the emergency room when the doctor discovered a skin rash which Susan and I hadn’t even noticed* which can be a signifier for blood infection/sepsis.

!!!

So that’s the scariest parts. The truth is the whole thing was unreal. The whole time, Laura just seemed like a kid with a bad cold to us, and every doctor who examined her said some version of the same thing: this rash makes us nervous as do some of these other issues, but bottom line is, she seems ok based on appearance and how she’s behaving, and everything we’re doing is by way of being cautious.

Being cautious still meant 5 hours in the ER, people doing awful things to my daughter which made her howl piteously, and no small amount of anxiety, but compared to a few episodes we had with Brady this was easier to live through. She left the hospital after an injection of a different antibiotic and a prescription for a third one.

She’s still not entirely done with this episode. She has to go back for more bloodwork Wednesday, and one of the tests they did (a blood culture) won’t have results until the end of the week. If you saw her today you would think nothing was wrong with her though, the fever is gone, and her appetite is mostly back to normal. Her stomach is still tetchy is her only remaining ailment.

The doctors aren’t really sure what this was. It could all be the ear infection and a reaction to the initial meds, or it could be more than one bacterial infection at once (sinus and digestive being the best bets) or bacterial plus viral. If all the bloodwork comes back clean by the end of the week, we’re more or less done – we’ll never know exactly what happened, but she’ll be clear of whatever it was. This is the outcome I’m hoping for.

By coincidence I’m reading Mantel’s “Bring Up the Bodies,” which follows the reign of Henry VIII, wherein infants die of ailments many and sundry, most not understood by anyone. Thank god my daughter wasn’t born a few hundred years ago – she might have been one of them 😦

* in defense of Susan and me, this “rash” consisted of 5-6 tiny dull pencil point sized skin blemishes. I had actually noticed one and thought it a bug bite. I certainly wouldn’t have called it a rash. Now I know.