Let me sum up (in a not so short fashion)

The whole sick kid thing seemed to come out of nowhere around here at Life of Elle. Sorry about that. Honest to God we thought is was teething. At first at least. So here’s the whole scoop of what’s been up the past week. Really. Week.

All day Tuesday the boy ran a low grade temperature. Right around 99-100. This is pretty typical for him with the teething.

Wednesday the trusty husband and I had to go to the doctors to have our TB tests done (which were negative) and the boy still wasn’t up to snuff. Temp around 100ish. We ran to the mega bullseye store and I bought the boy one of those play kitchens. I took me for stinking evah to put it together once we got home. As soon as I was finished it was lunch time so he didn’t really get to play with it. He pitched a fit about eating lunch and I thought it was just because he wanted to play with the kitchen. I told him that he could play after nap time. This pissed him off more and he started screaming. Then coughing. Then throwing up. Of course he hadn’t eaten much so it was a whole lot of nothing. After fighting him for a while I got him down for a nap. The trusty husband and I had an IM conversation about all of this and we started to think there was some kind of reaction going on with all the various medications he was taking. Dr. Internets told us not to give people who are taking TB medications any Tylenol. Shit. We ran out of Ibuprofen that morning and were dosing him with Tylenol. I call the pediatrician and they say to bring him in. The doc says despite the cough and the junk crusting his eyes his lungs, sinuses and ears are clear. He has a virus. Give motrin and tylenol and it should run its course.

That night he was up around 11:30. Crying and hot. Took temperature and it was 102. Fine, but according to my handy parenting chart not worth a panic. We dosed him with more drugs and put him in bed. Slept fine except a slight bonking of the head on the crib side around 3:30.

Thursday he ran a constant temperature of 102. More drugs. Lethargic kid and little eating, but OK drinking just made life boring because I spent most of the afternoon on the sofa watching kid’s television programming.

Thursday night we put him in bed and around 8:30 he woke up crying. Kid was on fire. Took his temperature and it was 104.6 in one ear and 105 in the other. At the same time I was taking his temperature my mother called and the conversation went something like this:

*ring*ring*
Elle: (seeing caller ID is mom) “at what point do you take the child to the ER?”
Mom: “why, what’s wrong?”
Elle: “his temperature is 105”
Mom: “time to take him in”
Elle: “Ok, I’ll call you back”
Mom: “stop panicking”

3 hours later we leave the ER with the doc telling it was… a virus. We went to the ER and all they did was give him some motrin. Oh, and freak out when we told them he had a positive TB test. Chest x-rays… blah, blah, blah.

Friday, temp 102 again. Night time was about the same. Up at 11:30. Derek and I about read to kill each other because neither thought they were comforting the child correctly. Temp 104-105. We finally got him back to sleep and he was up at 3:30 again.

Yesterday his fever was much better. Ran around 100 all day. Around 7:00 he laid down on the living room floor and tried to fall asleep. This couldn’t be good. He cried as soon as he got out of the bath and things went down hill from there. He was in bed by 8:00 and awake again at 9:30. Then at 10:15, 10:45, 11:15 (by this time we’re calling the hospital agian). He was awake about every 15-20 minutes from then until 12:30 at which point we put him in the bed with us. Still awake ever 15 minutes. At 2:30 he was not just whimpering, but full out crying and sitting up. More drugs, in the rocking chair, temp 103.8 and cool rags. 30 minutes later I put him in his bed and he slept without crying until 8.

We called the on-call doc at the pediatrician’s office and he said to go ahead and take him back to the ER. The really awesome ER doc found that he had developed an ear infection. Could explain why the child winced and cried every time we jammed the ear thermometer in his ear. Go figure.

4 hours and a hair blood draw later it was determined that he had… a virus, that developed an ear infection. Now we have antibiotics!

The trusty husband is trying to put him to bed right now. Hopefully he’ll sleep for more than 15 minutes at a stretch tonight.

I have to say that this illness has kicked all 3 of our asses. God help me when he starts preschool and is exposed to all of those carrier monkeys.