Very Sick Little Girl

This past Monday, the boys were out of school for the holiday and I decided that it would be Day 1 of Gracie's Potty Traning Boot Camp. And to follow the advice of Kate (of the famous and beloved Jon and Kate plus 8) and not leave the house with her (except taking the boys to and from school each day) all week. Potty training would be accomplished this week if it was the last thing I did.

Ah, you know what they say about the best laid plans...

Monday, Day 1: Pee Peed on the big girl potty 5 times! No accidents! She did wear a diaper when she took her nap though. I was pumped and oh so proud!

She began to get fussy in the afternoon and wasn't interested in eating lunch, snacks or dinner. I chalked it up to toddler moodiness. Every day is a new day...

She wanted to take a bath that evening and by the time I got her out, she was shivering like crazy and her lips were blue. Yep-all you moms and dads know what that means- she had fever. Not just a little fever. A 103.7 fever.

Long story short, she threw up several times that night, slept only a couple hours and ran fever anywhere from 102-104.8 all night. And that was with alternating Motrin and Tylenol.

She has been this sick ever since.

We took her to the doctor on Wednesday and after 5 hrs in the doctors office, doing a blood test (the real thing with the needle in the arm- drawing more than 1 vial of blood. The ladies in the lab called her their "little bucker" and it took 2 of them plus me to hold her down. Can you say traumatic?) and a urine test (which they had to catheder her to get because she wore a urine bag for over 3 hours and never peed and we couldn't get her to pee on the potty. She had to be held down by 2 nurses and cathedered by 1. I will spare the details on how traumatic this was... for both of us. Especially since I had to wait outside the room and just listen to her wail...) the only thing we found was that she had strep throat.

So, we got antibiotics and headed home. For the past 2 days, we've had more of the medicines thrown up than we have gotten in her stomach.

She hasn't eaten anything to speak of since Monday morning at breakfast. Most of what little we have gotten her to eat has come back up...

After 4 doses of the twice per day antibiotic, her fever was still ranging from 99 to 101.7. We finally decided there must be something else going on. She is weak, miserable, black around her eyes and on the verge of being dehydrated- as we can't get her to drink much either.

After a whole week of this, I'm just at my wits end and not feeling too hot myself. Julie came up last night to spend the night and help out and my mom came to spend the day today after Julie left to go back to BV to go to work.

Mom and I took her back to the dr today and after 3 hours and more blood tests (this time they remembered their "little bucker" and it took 3 nurses plus me to hold her down) we discovered that there is now an ear infection to go with the strep throat, but nothing else is showing up. The dr gave us another antibiotic that is a little easier for an empty tummy to take and only has to be given once per day, so hopefully that will start to kick in and help.

They did a mono test and the quick result was negative, Praise the Lord, but the Doctor sais she sent off for the more in depth mono test also. If she's still running a fever after the weekend, I'm supposed to bring her back and that's likely what we're dealing with. That is so scary to me!! I'm praying that's not what this is.

Aside from a couple of bright spots last night and this morning, when the doubled up medicine was kicked in just right, she is still miserable. Fever is still 100.9. She's starving. She tries to eat something and screams when she tries to swallow it.

Poor thing. I feel so bad for her.

I just took a picture of my usually photogenic little angel and this is the best she could muster up. Please say a little prayer for her to get well!