This week, though, I feel like I'm stuck on a holiday marathon of the Wizard of Oz without DVR or any way to change the channels or turn the damn tv off. Because this week, we got to live last weekend all over again as if it hadn't been enough fun the first time around. There have a few tweaks here and there as if the network has maybe cut a few of the worst commercials, but still, it's been pretty painful.
Little did I know when I was chronicling my baby's crankiness on Fri that she was actually getting sick. There may have been a few expletives thrown around under my breath that day, and OMG, for that, I'm so sorry, baby. By Sat morning, there was no question that the kid was burning up. We unearthed our thermometer finally from the moving boxes and checked her temp - 102.something. So we started looking for a pediatrician open on Sat mornings. I guess at least we are up in San Jose by this point, because the chances of finding that in Hollister would have been nil. We're lucky, sometime during the move, I had found this list of San Jose peds offered by my OB, and for once I set something aside and actually managed to find it later fairly easily. And the first pediatrician on the list had both good internet reviews (we like to shop for docs the same way we pick where we want to eat) and Sat morning hours AND had an opening.
Took her in. A blood test run at the doc office (yay, no waiting in line at the labs like I'd had to at the Hollister hospital) revealed another (or the same?) bacterial infection and likely a viral infection, as well. If it had been just a viral thing, we'd have breathed a sigh of relief and gone home. G's been sick with a cold/cough since mid-last week, so we figured it was only a matter of time before the kid and I picked it up also. But instead, we received another antibiotic injection (poor kid STILL has the marks from last week, as well as a bruise from the failed IV site). We were sent home but with orders to check in with the doctor at home that evening. Yeah, the doc gave us her home number. She also wrote us a prescription for another oral antibiotic and told us to give DZ both Advil and Tylenol that night. Usually, they don't recommend Advil for babies under 6 months, so between that, the home number, and the fact that the doc wanted to see us again Sun during her off hours had us pretty worried. Are you sensing a trend here? Maybe I should rename this blog something like, "Sunday s at the Doctor's Office with the W's". Or "Meeting the Bay Area's doctors, one emergency at a time.' Because you know, we've already exhausted the local vets.
Anyway, one thing we've learned about our daughter now is that she does not like taking medications of any kind. She usually promptly vomits them out, along with whatever else she may have in her stomach. So there were some fun cleanups that day. But she seemed to improve a bit until we woke up around 9am on Sun morning and her temp was at 105!!! We thought we were reading the thermometer wrong, so checked again about 10 minutes later, and it was still 104.5 or something. So we called the doc and rushed her into the office. And the doc admitted us to the hospital. My face must have been pretty expressive because the first thing she said after that was that I shouldn't worry, that she wouldn't send me to anyone that didn't know what they were doing.
So at the moment, we are again hanging out at the local hospital, this time, probably for 3 nights. I'm hoping we get to go home tomorrow morning, and so far, the only upside is that I've had lots of time to blog. On top of whatever other bacterial infection she has, DZ has now picked up G's cold (as have I), so we both spend our days sniffling and sneezing. She's been on IV antibiotics since Sun evening. But guess what, the nurses here could actually insert the IV!! Not only that, they did it in no time at all. They only allowed one parent in the exam room while they were inserting it, and I couldn't do it. G went in instead but I expected to hear prolonged screaming since the exam room was right across the hall from our room. But to my surprise, they were out in less than 5 minutes, and G said most of that time was spent bandaging up the IV so that she wouldn't jar it loose. In Hollister, the nurse must have spent more than 45 minutes just looking for a site and then messed up twice.
They were also able to get a catheter in to collect urine from her. I couldn't watch that either, but the screaming lasted much longer that time. It took 10 minutes and I heard screaming the entire time. These days, though, if we come anywhere near a doctor or nurse, the kid seems to know a poke or prod is coming, so she starts screams immediately, even if they're just checking her temp or listening to her heart beat. But G said it had been painful to watch. I guess the urethra is hard to find in babies, and they had to try several times with different sized needles before they were able to extract any urine out. I'm kind of glad the Hollister nurse gave up after two tries, saying that "she thought she had the right spot but still nothing came out." She was SO reassuring, let me tell you.
Also, rather than asking me repeatedly whether I wanted to nurse my baby to calm her down, these nurses freely admitted that babies are quick to learn that nurses coming close to them = bad news. I got that a lot in Hollister, and I wanted to tell them that if they didn't take so damn long to do everything wrong, she wouldn't be close to a feeding anyway.
So anyway, I guess it's not an exact repeat. It's like a new and improved Wizard of Oz or something though I can't even imagine there being such a thing. Maybe in HD? We're at Good Samaritan in San Jose and they have an excellent pediatric unit here. The nurses in our unit are actually experienced working with infants. The doctors have inspired nothing but confidence so far. And although there's been a lot of nurses barging in randomly still, they are on the whole a bit more respectful of letting DZ sleep. The nurse last night almost drove me insane because she was clearly young and new and not inclined to bending the rules, "I have to check her vitals every four hours, I'm so sorry, but I'll be quiet, I promise." This said in a loud voice right next to DZ's crib, of course. The nurse the night before had let us get monitored at 2am when she absolutely had to deliver the IV antibiotics. I mean, I don't want to be woken up at 2am either, but if we have to, let's at least get it all done then. But no, the nurse promised, she could be quiet and wouldn't even need to disturb DZ at the 2am waking. Sounded great in theory except that she forgot to do something with the IV monitor and two seconds after she left the room, it started blaring and flashing red. So yeah, that plan didn't work so well. Plus, my kid just doesn't sleep through anything now. Partly it's the age, partly she's freaked out and wary of anyone coming in to poke her, and partly because it's just her. But whatever, crap is still crap however you dress it up. But I guess I'll still take this experience over last week's nightmare. DZ was born at this hospital, and if there's one place trust, it's here.
At the end of the day, though, the ending is still pretty unsatisfying, which is why I was never able to tolerate Wizard of Oz even once let alone multiple times. They still have no idea what's wrong. Just to be on the safe side, we're talking to an infectious disease doc before we're out of here. But the pediatrician here told us that fevers at this age often remain mysterious. That's not what I want to here. We're not in the middle of a House episode, I want answers dammit. But the most he could offer was that he's confident that DZ will be just fine and that none of this is likely to be very serious. So I guess we'll see.
