It's been a tough few days

For those of you that follow me on Twitter (@philgrad) or Facebook, you've seen the status updates and tweets (grr) coming in about Emerson. We've been riding the wave of illness in this house since last Friday. Short story: everyone is fine. It all takes place against the backdrop of my first attempt at a "staycation", taking a Friday/Monday combo off so I'd have a nice, long weekend.

It initially appeared to be a low grade fever, just under 100. This, we thought, could be due to the three molars she is working on simultaneously. Friday morning she woke up and was much more feverish, around 101.5. Marantha, too, was sick, sporting a nasty cold and pink eye (for the third time). Good times.

The fever got worse, although Emmie was a trooper. She hit mid-103s a few times on Friday, so we got her in to the pediatrician on Saturday as soon as we could (although we couldn't get in to see our regular doc). After a negative strep test, they surmised that it was a viral infection, so the typical 72 hours should suffice for fever, and we should just keep an eye. Any fever under 103, Emmie was acting almost normal. She was eating, drinking, and playing. Then things got worse. We saw the fever hit 104.8 on Saturday and Sunday, and she started to not want to eat. She got listless. Sunday was pretty bad.

On Monday we took her back to the pediatrician--our own this time--who did a urine culture (negative) to rule out a UTI, then sent us to Children's Hospital. There they did a CBC and chest X-Rays. Both were negative, so no pneumonia, and no bacterial infection. So we were back at the viral diagnosis, although now we'd had 5 days of fevers, most of which were 103+. Scary stuff. The best guess was roseola, which presents with high fevers and few if any other symptoms. After the fever breaks, you get a nice red rash (non-itchy, thankfully). Now we have no fever, and no rash.

It's good to see her smile again.

Mexican night!