I wrote this post several weeks ago and just realized as I was posting Andrew’s recent Urgent Care trip, that I never published it. Better late than never, right?
AJ picked up a slight cough last week on Thursday (2.24.11). I noticed in the morning before I left for work, but didn’t think much of it. However, by that evening, it had turned into a deep, dry consistent cough.
Unfortunately, bad cough = no sleep…. for him or parents. Actually, Marc stepped up and was up with him most of the night. They “slept” on the couch, trying to keep AJ as upright as possible.
He was running a fever on Friday so we did not send him to school. He stayed up in our room watching movies so he wouldn’t infect all the other boys. Friday night = more coughing, high fevers and another rough night. We were administering a constant cocktails of cough syrup and fever/pain meds.
Things started looking up on Saturday (2.26.11). The coughing, while not gone, went down considerably, the fever lowered and even disappeared for a while, and even though he still had no appetite, his personality came back a little. His only main complaint was that his throat hurt, which we thought was completely understandable since he had been consistently coughing for the last 24 hours.
Then he napped and we could hardly wake him up. When we did he was inconsolably crying his throat hurt. (at this point, over the course of the last couple days, the boy had been living on popsicles). Because of some recent possible exposure and the fever, we thought “strep” and decided to take him to our local Urgent Care Center.
However when we got there, his fever was 103 (with fever meds being him for a good hour) and his oxygen was way low. (I got a nice little education blood oxygen levels). So they set him up with a breathing treatment and ordered chest x-rays to confirm what they suspected… pneumonia.
I’ll say it again… Praise God for the iPhone and Angry Birds to keep boys occupied and distracted during long waits.
Then they also found an ear infection for good measure. But surprisingly, no strep.
So AJ got a dose of steroids right there at Urgent Care and we left with a prescription for a strong antibiotic (no free amoxicillin for pneumonia) and more steroids. And within another 24 hours our happy boy was back. (ok, I know the picture on the left is an angry face, but he was doing it on purpose to be silly).
Another side thing I learned… a dose of steroids is the equivalent of give a child a family size bag of Skittles in one sitting. With 15 minutes, after each dose, that boy would be bouncing off the walls like a crazy man!
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