Potty time

So . . . we've decided it's about time.  Probably in the next weeks, we're going to start potty training.    Well, not us specifically, because believe it or not, we're actually quite good at using the toilet.   But G and I are thinking that it's time to get the little D on board, as well.  It's early.  Looks like most people don't really start until their kids are over 2, maybe two and a half.  Ok, so there are people that start at birth, which sounds kind of kooky (google "elimination communication" to read all about it).  But otherwise, two and a half seems to be about the earliest I've heard people say they've tried it.  So maybe we're setting ourselves up for failure.  And I think we might be at a little more of a disadvantage since D can't walk yet.  At this point, the most we'd be able to do is have her tell us when she wants to go, and we'd go set her on the toilet seat.  Most of the sites that I've been reading seem to assume that the child can get himself to the bathroom and help undress, as well.  And the techniques that I've been reading about seem to assume a certain level of comprehension:  a child who can understand that she messed up if she has an accident, can help clean up, etc.

But there's nothing I like more than a challenge.  Actually, it's something that we've been thinking about for a while.  With D's kidney reflux, the earlier we can potty train, the better.  I guess the theory is that the more a child can learn to urine purposefully/all at once, rather than in trickles throughout the day, the less urine refluxing overall.  So it's been in the back of our minds for a while that maybe we should try to start.  And, for months now, daycare has been putting D on the toilet whenever the older kids go.  Most of the time now, when they leave her long enough, she'll go!  So her teacher has been saying for months that potty training is going to be so easy with this one.  Plus, she'll tell us when she poops (our kid, I mean, not the daycare teacher).  Sometimes, I think she confuses her pee as poops, and usually, she doesn't say anything until after she's gone, but still that's a step in the right direction.  And, she can spot the dogs pooping and peeing from a mile away.  "Mia, poo poo?" she'll ask, well aware now of what happens on our walks.  I've also been working on helping her differentiate pooping vs. tooting, and coming along rather well at it.

So in January, G bought a little portable potty, and I started asking daycare for more specifics.  But I didn't love what I was hearing.  Apparently, they let her sit there for 20-30 minutes, because sometimes that's what the other kids do.  And then they'll check at some point and find that there was poop or pee in the toilet.  I don't have that kind of patience.  And anyway, I tried setting her on our toilet at home and she cried in seconds.  Plus have you seen those little portable potties?  SO gross.  Cleaning them seems so disgusting.  At daycare, they have these adorable little baby toilets that flush and everything.  I started to wonder if this might be a job best left for professionals.   And anyway, all this was before our last round of hospitalizations.  With the prospect of surgery now to fix the reflux altogether, it may be a moot point anyway.

Somehow, though, the idea has persisted and we're finally ready to give it a shot.  We returned the portable potty and bought one that just attaches to the regular toilet.  I've tried setting the kid on it a few times, and she's usually cried.  So yesterday, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. She's kind of (bizarrely) in love with Elmo these days (I say, bizarre because we couldn't figure out how she even knew him), so I found a youtube video of baby Elmo using the potty.  Yes, there really is nothing that can't be found on the internet.  If you're looking for something to drive you absolutely bonkers, find this video and listen to it over and over again.  I guarantee you that it'll get the job done.  So I set her on the toilet and played the video on the phone.  She loved it.  She didn't pee or poop but stayed on the toilet for like 10 minutes watching the video over and over again (see?  this is how I know about bonkers).

We did this a few times yesterday, and she seemed to completely lose her aversion to the toilet.  I was proud until I read online that it's actually a terrible idea to play videos while your kid's sitting in the toilet.  Basically, you don't want them so distracted that they forget to actually do their business. Which probably explained why she didn't go once in the toilet yesterday, even though we sat her on it several times.  The point of the article seemed to be especially driven home this morning.  When D woke up, she asked to go sit on the potty!  I mean not right away, but later, while we were laying around in bed, she asked for the potty and lifted her arms to be taken there!  I was SO SO proud, thinking, man, maybe our kid is totally ready after all.  So we went through the entire production of getting out of bed, taking off her footy pajamas (which are definitely NOT conducive to potty training), and setting her on the toilet.  She sat there for all of 4 seconds, smiling joyfully, before asking, "Emo?"  The little turd just wanted her video!!  Needless to say, she did not pee in the toilet, and I'm guessing she didn't have to go at all.  Honestly, it was just long enough after waking up that she probably did all her peeing into her diaper, so that should have been a tip off right there that she was just yanking our chains.

But still, the weekend hasn't been a total waste.   I sat her on the toilet one more time this morning.  She still didn't do anything, but she reached over for the toilet paper, grabbed a bit, and started wiping her crotch!  It was super cute.  I think issues with walking and Elmo aside, she's ready in the ways that matter.  She knows what she's supposed to do and seems to have an interest in doing it.  So it can't hurt to give it a go.  We'll probably keep trying haphazardly for now, but then start in earnest one of the next few weekends when we have absolutely no plans.  I want to make sure I know what I'm doing so that I don't get her hooked on more Elmo videos as incentive.  She has her urology appointment in about a week, so I want to see if surgery's going to interfere in some way.  And I want to make sure that we're on the same page as daycare.  So we'll see how it all goes!

living with a hoarder

So I love my husband, I do, I do. But one of my biggest pet peeves about him is that he LOVES to buy. And somewhat related to that, he can’t stand to throw anything away. Now, I’m someone who may keep things for a while, but will periodically go on cleaning frenzies where I’ll toss out my left foot if I decide that I haven’t used it for a while. So obviously, I don’t get this particular trait AT ALL. I’m pretty sure G’s got boxes of term papers from college, ashtrays made when he was 5, and receipts dating back to the dark ages. Because yes, he’s that old.

On the buying front, our garage also contains enough garbanzo beans to feed an army, cases of various juices that just “sounded good” but turned out to be disgusting, and diapers for when the little D turns 5 (because Cost-Co happened to be having a sale and who cares if she can’t wear a size 10 just yet). If the world is engulfed in a nuclear war, our family will be able to sustain ourselves in our garage for a good month. Assuming of course that we’re able to get to anything with all the other stuff piled over it. Last week, I had do some acrobatics (climbing over boxes, squeezing through stacks of who knows what) to reach a little bag of rice that was in our garage cupboard. Every effort I make to clean out our freezers so I can actually see what’s in there is countered by, “Oh look at that! There’s more room for more stuff. Awesome!” As many of you know, G is probably one of Cost-co’s best customers (and best returners, because he’ll be eventually able to scrounge up a receipt from 5 years ago to return that box of almonds we bought back then and opened but decided we didn’t like).

The other night, I was clearing one of our end tables in preparation for the maids and came across a weird box of black charcoal-y looking things. Included in the vicinity was some paperwork from some lab of some sort. Assuming it was junk mail, I started to throw it away. But no, it turned out it was a valuable test ordered by my husband to check the presence of radon in our homes.

“What does that mean?” I asked, because I'm such an excellent communicator that way.

“What do you mean, what does it mean? It tests for radon.”

“Yeah, but what makes you think we have radon in our homes?"

“I don’t know. We might.”

“What is radon anyway and how would we have gotten it in our homes?”

“I don’t know, I guess sometimes it’s just there.”

“I don’t get it. I mean, radon is a gas right? Does it emanate from the stove tops?”

“I DON’T know.”

“How does the test work?”

“I don’t know. You test and send out for the results.”

And round and round we went. I honestly wasn’t trying to give him the third degree to start. I was just perplexed and curious about how this sudden need to test our house, but G’s short responses just frustrated me more and more. It was only about 10 minutes into this rigmarole that I realized that G wasn’t trying to be evasive. Clearly, this is what happened: he saw something somewhere talking about radon emissions and decided to send out for the test. This could have been anywhere from a few months to a year ago. Since then, he’d forgotten all about it. But of course didn’t have the heart to toss the test out because who knows why it sounded important to him at the time. And possibly my endless questioning frustrated him because he couldn’t remember jack squat.
This is how most of the junk around our house piles up. At some time or another, it sounded “cool.” At any given time, you could come over to our house and we’d be able to scrounge up all kinds of snacks that we haven’t eaten because we simply haven’t remembered that we had them at all. When my mom was here, she mentioned that she found some cashew things under the laundry in the garage, and she hoped she didn’t mind but she broke open the bag to have some. The little D likes bubbles, so of course someone went out and bought not your average soap bottle/bubble blower but a monster, battery-operated bubble shooter. That we can’t use in the house because it leaves a soapy residue throughout the entire room. So of course now, it sits in the garage after we used it for maybe 10 minutes.

Our fights on the issue follow pretty much the same pattern. I complain, G might stop for a while, and then, within a few weeks, buy more. Or he finds ways around my complaints. For example, I told him he wasn’t allowed to buy food at Cost-co until we make a dent in what we already have.  He's abided by that rule, but later in the week, shipments started to arrive from Amazon containing, you guessed it, food. None of it is perishable, is probably his favorite defense. We could have it for years before it goes bad.

So, any tips for living with a hoarder/compulsive shopper?

In other news (i.e. come on now, I'm entitled to a little gushing)

Aside from her being sick all the time and probably having the worst luck ever when it comes to medical issues, I gotta say that our kid is pretty darn awesome.  At 20 months, she's definitely not a baby anymore.   There are so many moments now that I look at her and I see the little toddler staring back at me.  She knows what she wants and asks for it, though often imperfectly.  It's kind of amazing to watch the transformation, although I have a feeling that I'll always miss our baby.  

This morning, she got up at 5:30 (fun times) looking for her doggie blanket.  Usually, she'll do this periodically through the night.  She loves her blankie but loses it constantly. If she wakes up and it's not there, she'll kind of cry a little, crawl around for it and then eventually find it or not, but still go back to sleep.  But this morning, there was no crying.  Instead, there was this, "Doggie??!?  Doggie!  Doggie!"  I glanced at the monitor and saw her sitting up and reaching around and finally sent G in to find it for her.  The half sleeping cries are much easier to ignore than the demands we heard this morning.  But then once he was in there, she decided that she also wanted "Mi"  (milk) so it was all a done deal.  I think we both resigned ourselves to not sleeping the rest of the morning.  When I peed and made my way to the kitchen, G was already warming the milk, and the little D was smiling happily, like it wasn't 5:30 in the morning. 

When I went to pick her up from daycare yesterday, she was riding a little bike around in circles outside.  A little boy bumped past her on his own vehicle, and she looked at him and said, "OW" although I know it didn't hurt.  She saw me and scuttled over but didn't want to leave.  It was windy and there was a tree above us with pretty little flowers that kept blowing off.  "Flower,"  she said, pointing to the petals.  Or something like that, it probably sounded more like "owwa."  I reached up and plucked a few off the tree to hand to her, and before I knew it, a bunch of the other kids wanted one too.  So I grabbed a few more and started distributing.  And my kid clutched her own flowers a little more tightly while simultaneously pointing to the other kids and said, "mine."  

At home, too, she has several bike-type toys, and they've quickly become her favorite.  She'll push along through the whole house, sitting on her trike or ladybug.  Choo-choo, she'll say from her train, or beep beep from the other ones.  Beep, beep, she'll tell the dogs if they're in her way, or the wall if she happens to hit it.  Or sometimes, she'll use them to get closer to the dogs. Yesterday, she went towards Tucker wanting to give him a kiss.  "To-tor" she kept saying, while smacking her lips and wheeling towards him.  Totor just got nervous and left.  Probably because he knows that her love is fickle.  One minute she might be trying to kiss the dogs, the next she'll be pushing them off their beds to take their place.  Or, "go" she'll say, pointing her fingers, a new one she learned from my mom last week.  "Go" she'll tell me too, if I'm getting a little too close.   

Last week, my mom was here and watching her during the day.  One morning, I had her with me while I was grabbing some socks from my dresser, and she happened to see a hat in the drawer.  "Hat?" she said, reaching for it.  I took it out and tried to put it on her head.  No, she said, mama?"  So I put it on and grabbed one of hers from her room.  A cute little green one.  Tried to put it on her head and she said no.  But later, that morning, my mom said she reached for it again and tried to put it on, saying all the while, "Mama hat."  

She throws tantrums like you wouldn't believe.  Last week, she wanted to vacuum, and I let her crawl around for a while, pushing the vacuum along.  If she'd been more effective at it, I'd have let her go at it all day.  But instead, I tried to finally put a stop to it and she wailed and screamed and yelled.  But just as often, her tantrums are of the stubborn type, the refusal to do something she doesn't want to do, quiet but determined.  

No thanks, I don't want to get up just yet, please.  One more "boop?" 

She loves her "boops" and can sit around for long stretches, just looking at the pictures.   She also loves music and dance, and will often ask for music in the background while we're playing or eating.  "eh" she'll say, swaying back and forth.  G started playing her hip hop and rap, and our kid can get jiggy with it with the best of them.  Once, we saw her in the back seat, her blankie in her hand, her thumb in her mouth, dancing to Eminem.  Clearly, only the best for our girl.  And I have no idea where she gets it from, seeing as how G and I both have 2 left feet. 

Diya and Dada, listening to some tunes

The other day, I was doing something in the kitchen while she was hanging out in the family room.  Peep a boo, she said, peering from around the side of the couch.  Or, "horse" she'll say and point to our heads, meaning she wants to ride around the house on our shoulders.  Everyday seems more fun than the one before.  She still doesn't walk, but her legs have gotten closer and closer together.  She seems to need less and less assistance to stand and takes every opportunity to do so.  And aside from the slowed mobility, she's right on track.  Everyday, she learns a new word and starts to use it.  Everyday, she'll decide something else is fun and just can't get enough of it.  And she'll laugh and laugh and laugh while doing it, especially if it scares the crap out of us, like her new habit of riding the ends of the couch.  This week, it's coming out with me to feed the dogs.  Down, she'll tell them sternly as I'm getting the food, and then, "stay."   And when finally, they're "ready" she'll look at me, smiling, so proud of her accomplishment.  At her last well-child visit at 18 months, our ped said anywhere from 6-20 words were normal at that age.  I tried to make a list and came up with more than 50.  And I'm guessing that's doubled since then. 

Serving tea -- When you're finished with your cup, she'll ask, "Meore?" and give you more.  Sometimes, she'll drink straight from the kettle.  You know, when she's especially thirsty. 

She wants to do everything on her own, but suddenly, doesn't mind asking for "help."  I gave her coffee once while in India (like a teaspoon of it), and now she's hooked.  "Offee?"  she'll ask if she sees me with a mug.  Or grinding the beans.  Or, the other day, when G walked in with Starbucks.  How the heck does she know, we wonder?  And if she's lucky enough to get a sip, "mmm" she'll say, and then "Meore?"  (more). 

It's crazy to me how much fun this is.  And this is coming from some one who's been up from 5:30 this morning.   And spent the wee hours being jumped on and poked and prodded while the kid  basically made sure everyone in the household was wide awake.  Think of how much more I must love her on a full night of sleep.  But even with all the doctor's visits and hospital stays, our kid's pretty darn good at being a regular kid.  And is just about the smartest, most cheerful, adorable, and perfect thing there is.  

So check out how close her legs are here . . . even a few months ago, she'd have been standing with her legs wide apart like a gymnast.  Clearly we've come a long way.  BTW, we LOVE it when she decides to climb on the couch like this.  Totally awesome, and not at all unsafe. 

another not so great update

So . . . our urologist stopped by for a bit yesterday.  He didn't really have a lot of answers.  He doesn't know why D's urine tests and cultures always came back negative.  But from looking at the scans, he is sure that it's a kidney infection. No doubt about that now, it seems.  And it's not something worse, so phew. Apparently, the other thing that can happen is that little abscesses can form. These are little pockets of infection that are incredibly hard to treat.  Our kid would be in the OR already if she had one.  So that's good at least.

Also a good thing is that everyone's sure now of what it is.  Treating it should be relatively easy.  She gets IV antibiotics.  We'll be discharged when she's fever free and doing well, and will then be given a course of oral antibiotics at home.  After that, we'll be changing the daily preventative antibiotic that D has been taking now.  She's taken them for the last year to prevent infection and clearly they're not working.

The good news stops there.  What our urologist also doesn't know is how much damage her kidneys may have already sustained from her infections.  Particularly since this last one was around for potentially a month and a half before they caught it.  And we probably won't know that answer for a while. So far, D's renal function studies are normal which is a good sign.  But I guess kidneys can scar after an infection, so we'll have to wait and see how her body handles this one.

But here's the thing.  She can't have another one.  So this reflux condition that would one day just go away on its own just became a lot more serious.  As long as her urine refluxes backwards, she will be susceptible to infections.  And that's just not allowed.  If even one (and now two) are worrisome there's no way she can have a third.  Especially with them being SO hard to diagnose too.  If we have to run a CT scan every time she has a fever, it's going to be a long four or five years (about how long they thought it would be before her reflux was completely resolved).

So our doc thinks we need to operate.  This was always in the cards if her condition didn't improve eventually, but he was always confident that it would improve.  So it wasn't an option that kept us up at night or anything.  But now, well, it'll probably keep us up at night.  There are two different operations they can do.  One is a simple outpatient procedure.  Our urologist will simply place a block in the tubes to keep the urine from getting to the kidneys.  The problem with this technique is that it has a not-so-great success rate for the long term.  The blocks get eroded and urine leaks through. It's fine for a child who has a less severe reflux, or for a kid who hasn't already had two pretty nasty infections.

Which means we'll probably be looking at the 2nd option:  a fairly extensive open surgery that involves them taking out the tubes completely and repositioning them somewhere else where they won't reflux.  It'd be a big deal. but the success rate is almost 100%.  So my guess is that we'll be going this route, but I'm not happy about it.  We'll see . . . no decisions are going to be made until the little D is completely well.  In a few weeks, assuming her fevers are completely gone, we'll go back in to get a picture of her reflux.  The last time we did this was over a year ago.  We were scheduled to do this again this summer. It's kind of a painful test and our urologist didn't want to keep subjecting our kid to it when changes aren't likely to happen that quickly. So we'll move that up a bit and see if her reflux has improved at all over the last year.  And then we'll have sit down and see what we want to do.  But our doc has pretty much told us that unless the reflux has disappeared completely (which it clearly hasn't since she has a kidney infection), he will probably recommend operating.

In the meantime, of course, we still don't know what we're looking at in the way of past damage.  All we can do is prevent anything more from happening in the future.  So. . . fun times.  

Our "House, M.D." saga . . . continued

Actually, I take that back. The CT was ok, but the night ended up being far from uneventful.  They did come grab us around midnight.  D had managed to doze off again a bit on top of me, and so did I.  We rested in the arm chair until we were woken up around 11:40 by one of the monitors blaring loudly. Not sure what it was trying to signal, but in the process of trying the silence the damn thing, I disconnected some of the cords connected to the kid and before I knew it, it was a whole production that involved the nurse coming and cleaning up all the wires.

The reason for not letting D eat was because they wanted to sedate her for the CT by giving her Ativan.  Said that it would knock her out briefly so that she'd remain still during the scan.  They set her on the table, gave her the meds through her IV, and waited for her to pass out.  Except that she didn't.   She seemed to get a little sleepy but actually smiled and chatted with the nurses for the first time ever. "Hi," she said, kind of smiling.  They finally just did the scan.  She cried and moved a bit, but the tech kept distracting her by telling her to "look at the lights.  See pretty lights.  Red lights.  Blue lights. Where are the lights?"  It could have been out of my brief pot-smoking days, with her dopily trying to reach out and touch the lights.   Is it bad that I was wishing the whole time that I'd had my phone with me so I could grab a video of my drugged up kid?

Oh, and as we were heading off to get the CT, they checked her temp and she was starting to run a fever.  But they couldn't give her anything until after the test.  So the poor thing was shivering a bit on the table.  For the most part though, the test went off without too much of a hitch.  We came back. They checked her again and her fever had gone up higher.  It turned out though that one of the other things that her docs had wanted to do is get a blood culture while she was having the fever to see if they could pinpoint what was going on.  So they couldn't give her drugs until the lab came by and collected more blood, which he finally did around 2.  D lay on me most of the time, but it was a bit funny to watch her.  She was definitely dazed and kind of teetered a little while sitting on my lap, but was also a bit more active than I would have expected. She eventually kind of dozed on my lap though until the lab guy showed up.  I think anyway, because I was passed out.

So now, we're what at like 2:30?  I don't know if it was the catnapping but more likely the Ativan, I'm guessing, but the kid was wired after that. I was dying, ready to drop any minute (Tues night, she'd been up from 1-4:30, Wed had been spent in the ER).  But there was my kid climbing all over my lap and chatting happily.  I'm pretty sure I actually fell asleep a few times while she was climbing because she'd keep waking me up by whacking me in the chest.  She was also pulling on her wires, and every so often, I'd have to get the nurse back in to re-adjust her.

I went home for a while in the evening, and G had been telling me how nice the night nurse was.  But I don't think she liked me much.  Well, unless she likes passive-aggressive whiners, in which case, we should be good friends.  It was probably the lack of sleep and the general feeling of helplessness, but I was definitely having difficulties last night.  I might have asked them "several' times if there were any other options for the CT since our baby was SO hungry and hadn't really eaten all day.  And OMG, if we could just get her to sleep, we may be able to help her forget her debilitating hunger pains, but there was just no way for that to happen in this setting. What with the loud housekeeping and frequent nurse visits.  When she told me about the blood draw, I just kind of looked at her, sighed, and asked if they could maybe come soon because our kid hadn't slept all night and her fever was climbing up to boot.  Every time some one came in to re-adjust D's wires, I'd throw in a comment about how awkward those wires were and so not conducive to sleeping.  I think I mentioned our rough night to every nurse, intern, doctor, and random person in the hallway I could think of last night.  I'm quite sure that I was everyone's absolute favorite parent.  HA, G even mentioned after how all the nurses asked him if he needed anything, if they could go grab him a drink, help him change a diaper, etc.  I'll tell you that I did not get that kind of sympathy.  

Anyway, soon after blood draw, the doc came in.  I mentioned the weird dazed/alert affect and she said, actually in a rare number of cases, Ativan causes this paradoxical effect.  Awesome!  She went on to deliver more good news.  The CT showed that both kidneys were infected.  So yah, that unlikely thing they thought it wasn't?  It totally was.  They don't know why her urine test and cultures have come back negative.  They also don't know why our last ultrasound in urology was normal-looking while our abdominal ultrasound showed swelling.  They don't know if she's had this kidney infection since we were in India (which I suspect she has), and if so, what that means for her long-term kidney function.  Our urologist had told us last year that every infection has the potential to cause some renal damage and it'll be hard to know what until much later in D's life.  So the possibility of a month and a half long infection?  Who knows.  I have lots of questions, but no one's been by yet this morning to discuss yet.  Last night, the doc just had some preliminary results. The radiologist is supposed to go over the CT in more detail today.  The ID folks were in here saying they were going to review the scan as well, and then possibly connect with the urology or nephrology team.  They started antibiotics at 3 in the morning (while D was in my lap pulling out her wires).  Hopefully, we'll have more answers by the end of the day.

In the meantime, I'm happy that they've finally diagnosed her.  Of course, it was what G and I said it was back when she got sick in India and have been wondering about EVERY TIME she's gotten sick in the last month a half.  But hey, we're not doctors, what do we know?  And I guess after all the specialists and testing, my pediatrician's gut had been right all along too.  So anyway, guess we'll see what more we hear during the day.

If I weren't annoyed/confused, I'd be all "I told you so"

So I'd been hoping to start veering away from the sickness posts.  They haven't really been all that fun to write, and honestly, they have all started to sound the same to me.  Can't be much fun to read either.  But I guess when there's nothing else going on in our lives, it's all I got.

So yet again, Tues, the little D got sick. She spiked a fever in daycare, and they called me that evening.  Gregg was actually around the corner to pick her up when they called.  He took her home and checked her temperature -- 102.6!  He took the day off on Wed (it's crazy, we kind of argue now about "whose turn" it is to take the sick day because we're both just running low on time off and SO busy at work).  I called our ped, and we scheduled an appointment for that afternoon.  And it was the same old, same old.  Shivering, then a spike in fever, feeling fine when the meds kicked in and she was fever-free. And of course, a trip to the doc wouldn't be complete without blood work showing super high white blood cell count, indicative of either a bacterial infection or a pretty serious viral one.

We discussed our options with the doc.  She had said after the last bout that she was considering checking for malaria, due to our recent travel.  Malaria has sort of a cyclical pattern with fevers going off and on every few days.  The length of the fever and frequency depends on the strain of malaria.  Also, she considered running some immune tests to determine if our kid just had a poor immune system.  Neither theory really fit, but it was the best she could come up.  She's also mentioned it being somehow related to her kidneys but the tests just kept coming back negative.  She first suggested just having us go across the street to the hospital she's linked with and running these two tests to start.  Or she suggested getting admitted there or at Good Sam, where we've been before.  But I started thinking that if our kid had some obscure travel-related disease (and believe me, now, I'd read up on a bunch of them and have managed to sufficiently scare myself shitless), I'd rather she be at Stanford.

Doc agreed that this was a good plan, but that we couldn't just get admitted there.  We'd have to go through the ER, and of course, there were no guarantees that they would admit.  But we decided we'd give it a shot and showed up at the ER at 5:30 in the evening.  And were still there at 11 that evening, being told again and again that it would just be a few more minutes before they could go over our lab results and probably send us home.  I was getting more and more livid.  They did do more tests than we had done previously, but also the same urine and blood work. They ruled out malaria but said that it was actually hard to pick up in infants. Usually they needed to do it three times to rule it out for sure.  They tested for things that I know she didn't have (cuz come on now, I google with the best of them) -- TB, various flu strains, pneumonia, mono, Eppstein-Barr.  At the end of the night, I was feeling like we could have done this much closer to home and probably been home already.  I think they probably would have liked to do a spinal tap to check for meningitis, but they backed off that one when I sounded less than thrilled about it.

At 11, they said they wanted to consult with infectious diseases.  Everything took 3x longer because it's a teaching hospital.  The resident had to check with the attending, same with the ID department - they needed to call back after consulting with the ID attending.  And finally, they decided at 1:30 that they couldn't send us home after all.  To be honest, it was crazy that they ever thought they could although by that point, we were ready to be out of there.  D's white blood cell count had actually INCREASED from the time we took her blood at our doctor's office.  And her blood markers for infection were super high.  As in, apparently, usually the value is like 1 and hers was in the 100s.  But the markers didn't shed any light into what kind of infection, just that she had something.  But given that, it was crazy they wanted to send us home and crazy that we wanted that too.  But I think we were all thinking that not much had changed from the previous times.  Her fever was actually a bit lower than it has been on other hospital visits, and when she didn't have a temperature, she was happy and cheerful.

But the infectious disease folks finally called bullshit and told them to admit us.  It then took a few more hours for them to find us a bed.  We finally "settled in" at 3am, and then handled more than an hour of questioning by the docs.  Incredibly detailed questions about when the fevers started, how frequently did she have them, how long exactly between symptoms, what was she like between symptoms.  Did she have these symptoms . . . etc etc.  You know, I have to say, I bet there are studies that correlate the comfort patients feel when they sense they are being adequately listened to.  Because after that, I decided we were probably in good hands. And it's silly because they didn't tell us anything.  And as it turns out, the things they considered were all completely wrong.  So it's kind of crazy that THIS was all it took to reassure me a bit.  And god, I had no idea, but apparently specific questions are up my alley.  Even while we were in the ER, I had come up with this long timeline of when D had gotten sick, what day she got better, when she spiked again, etc.  It was totally legit too, all spread out on a napkin and everything.  The peds team we talked to that night (everyone here is a "team" -- I'm not sure we've had many conversations with solo docs, usually only while they were waiting for their team to show up) decided that our trip to India was probably the source of our troubles.  They seemed to think that the most likely prospect was this bacterial infection that's caused by drinking unpasteurized milk (which we did in India, but always boiled first which is supposed to remove the bacteria).

The next "morning" (because you know, 4am is totally the middle of the night), it was a slew of people one after another.  A med student coming in to get more history so she could prepare to "present" us while on rounds, the entire pediatric group, infectious diseases folks, nurses in all shapes and forms, lab guys sucking more and more blood out of our kid's veins, some one from the peds team again to clarify a few things because they had been discussing us and had more questions.  Somewhere in the middle of it all, I called to update our pediatrician and she brought up again that she was highly suspicious of it being kidney related. This is something she's said to us often, during our multiple visits.  And yesterday morning, she said again that I should be pushy about that, ask them to try to do some type of kidney related test to rule that out.   Look, she said, we know she has this probably already.  If she were a kid with asthma, I wouldn't be questioning the lab results.  But if you have a likelihood for one thing that causes fevers, why go reaching for more exotic options.  I brought that up to the peds group, and they said it was highly unlikely that she'd have a kidney infection (or as our ped wondered an abscess -- which is basically a little pocket of infection that may not show up on urine tests).  But they are keeping all options open.  And in fact, her abdominal ultrasound which they had also run in the ER did show swelling in her ureters, a difference from our last urology ultrasound.  So they weren't ruling it out, but the urine tests should have picked up something if that were the case.

The ID folks came in the afternoon, and if I thoughts peds had a lot of specific questions, they had even more.  At the end of our talk, they told us that the unpasteurized milk was pretty unlikely but we'd wait for the tests before ruling it out.  I guess usually that's linked with lower white blood cell counts.  They also said they'd continue with the malaria testing but didn't see her fitting that pattern either.   Yes, it's a cyclical fever, but more like every 2 days.  There wouldn't be such long gaps between sickness.   They said according to the literature, it could be every 48-72 hours max. But honestly, they'd rarely seen a fever break for more than a day.  So . . . what did they think?  Well, what do you know, they also wondered about an abscess of some sort, either in the kidneys or somewhere near by.  I think basically what that means is that bacteria aren't all flowing around in there but have kind of congregated into little pockets of infection. So easily missed on a test.  Not easy to treat, but it would explain the symptoms and why her urine tests have always come back negative.  They ordered a CT-scan.  The message from ID seemed to be, yes, we'd consider all options, but it was looking like our India trip may not be the culprit after all.

They did the CT at midnight last night, and had us stop all food by 6:30.  Actually, at some point they asked us when she'd last eaten and said they needed to wait 6 hours from that time.  Except the problem was that by eating, we really just meant she'd taken a sip of milk and a few bites of cereal, not what you'd really call a meal.  Her appetite was crap all day, and if we'd known of the cutoff ahead of time, we  may have tried a little harder to convince her to eat.   Or stuffed her full of cookies at least.  So it was a fun time because around 9, D decided she wanted nana and mi (banana and milk) and there was no distracting her from the thought.  Rather than sleeping, she spent a chunk of the time asking for food and drink.  And it was so sad/cute.  She'd start crying at times, calm down and let herself be distracted but then smile and ask us cheerfully "mi?" like she was JUST realizing she may be thirsty.  G was able to finally calm her down a bit (he actually had her sleeping even until housekeeping came in and threw garbage cans around all over the room for five minutes).  He then left for the night-- oh yah, we've also been driving the 45-minutes back and forth to the house during all this to deal with the dogs.   We figured the CT would be relatively painless, so no need for both of us to hang out.  How wrong that was!

Oops, to be continued . . . probably later today once the docs are out of the room. . .

what a week

The sickness at our house continues, as the little D again spiked a fever last night. She had one ok day and one good day (with corresponding full nights of sleeps for all) before this new round.  Last week, our doc told us that if she didn't get better, she was going to start testing for obscure things, like malaria.  But then her temp started to drop, and I thought we may finally be out of the woods.  I guess this round isn't enough to get excited about yet.  It was 102.8 last night, but much lower since.  She got up at 3 (the magic hour, it seems, when she's sick), asked for some milk and promptly projectile vomited all over me.  Since then, things have been a bit calmer.  I called in sick again and have been hanging out with her.  Just low grade fevers for the most part, getting as high at 101.3 at some point before I medicated.  And no more vomiting.  Kinda cranky but kinda not (think screaming fit one minute because I won't pick her up and hold her at a precise spot by the window and then smiling and making goofy faces the next).  It could be worse.  And I could have it worse, too, I suppose.  On the one hand, people at work probably don't remember that I work there anymore.  But on the other hand, no work! and I can't really do much around the house even.  When awake, she's been demanding.  When asleep, the dogs follow me around too much every time I try to do something and she starts to stir from the patter of their footsteps.  So yay, no excuse to not sit on the couch and read/blog/surf/watch TV.

In other news (because I'm SO tired of blogging about illness), I think our kid may have strung two words together yesterday. Guess what they were?  "Bye Mia."  Go figure, right?  We were heading out the door to daycare/work and there it was.  She was waving to the dogs like she usually does and randomly saying bye along with their names occasionally, and suddenly, she was connecting the two together.  OK, so there was a definite long pause between the two words, so she may have been just saying them individually.  But I like to think otherwise. It's been a long time since I've happened to catch a milestone first, so just give me this one, all right?  

Also, I've started to think about potty training.  It's on the early side, but for a while now, daycare has been telling us that they sit her on the toilet with the big kids and she goes! They kind of rave about it, actually, and how great she is at it.  It seems like some days, she doesn't go in her diaper at all.  So they think she's a natural.  Hear that, folks, my kid is a natural and pooping and peeing.  :)  Plus, she's started to tell us when she's going "poo poo" or "pee pee".  Although she tends to call most things poo poo, even her farts and pee.  And she says it as she's doing it, not before.  I've been working on at least getting her to differentiate her "toots" so we'll see.  And oh, she laughs sometimes when she farts now, which just goes to show you that she's definitely her father's daughter.  So anyway, G went out and bought a portable toilet a few months ago, but we've run into a few snags. First, I tried to sit her on it, and she cried.  We left it there hoping she'd just sit on it all by herself and think it was her idea. It's been months now and she hasn't touched it once.  Plus, I got a few more details from daycare.  It turns out that they leave her (as well as the other kids) there for 20+ minutes at times and wait for her to go. I don't know that I have that kind of patience.  But I was there one day last week as she was just about to poop. They tried to set her on the toilet, and I think she was constipated.  And she just sat there trying to work out, and they brought her sips of water and slices of apple. Dude, while she was sitting there on the shitter!!  Ew right?   Also, the toilets they have at daycare are miniature regular toilets that flush and everything (they're so cute). The portable one that we have at home seems like it'd be so gross to clean out.  It's just a little bucket basically.  So we'll see. Although she may be getting ready, I'm not sure that Mom is just yet.

At night, she sleeps with a lovey blanket. The ones we have are square pieces of fabric with animal heads on them. And she adores them.  We can't get her to sleep without one, and she's chewed the corners all up until they're disgusting.  We have a cow, dog, frog, and rabbit.  But lately, she's been getting attached to her "doggie" and asks for that one over all others.  So G bought her a little monkey one this week, thinking she's super into monkeys now ("unkey, ooh ooh ooh") so maybe we can get her attached to a new favorite.  Because sometimes it sucks when the doggie is in the wash and she decides that's the one she wants.  And the whole point of having 4 is so that she'd never get attached to one.  So we gave her the monkey the other night. And she was excited to see it, but wanted nothing to do with it after.  Actually we gave it to her instead of her "fwoggie" that she was holding, and I'd say about the only thing we accomplished is getting her attached to her frog blanket too, so maybe things worked out fine after all.  She screamed for the frog back.  (In fact, the next night, which was last night, she threw up on the frog and wouldn't stop screaming for it back even after we exchanged it with the doggie).  That night, we decided to throw the monkey one into the corner of her crib after she fell asleep.  We often have an extra one in there because she moves around a lot while sleeping, and sometimes, if she wakes up, she screams if she can't find her blanket.  Anyway, we figured the monkey could be the extra that night, and she wouldn't know the difference in the dark. Well, let me tell you, if her random bouts of screaming that night were any indication, she definitely knew the difference.

In non-baby news, I started working out this week.  Well, last week but so far I've gone only twice. It doesn't help that the gym is near my work (the point is to go at lunch time) and I've only been at work for a total of 3 days since I joined.  It's another NY resolution that I made about a month ago and finally decided to focus on.  I'm also monitoring what I eat, which basically means that I'm usually hungry and thinking about food.  So we'll see how long I can keep this up.

Also, I've joined the Hunger Games fan club, meaning I've read more in the last couple of weeks than I have in a long time.

And wow, that's all I can think of that's not sickness-related. Is that sad or what?