My Daughter's Weekend Hospital Adventure

Saturday we were organizing our office/craft room because we got these really cool Elfa shelves and drawers. I was updated the kids’ boxes that held all their memorable items and I laughed as I went through the numerous papers from Children’s Hospital and many Urgent Cares. I laughed because my daughter is somewhat of a hypochondriac, and being the good parents that we are, we never take any chances. I believe I jinxed myself by going through all those papers.

You see, my daughter had been complaining of stomach pains since Friday morning. But we figured she had sore muscles from gymnastics since she had gone the night before for the first time in 3 weeks. She would be crying one minute and then up dancing while watching Hairspray the next. This is why we didn’t take her “illness” very seriously.

But then on Sunday evening she stopped dancing around and just sat on the couch. At one time I put my arm around her and she felt really hot…she had a temperature of 104.3! So I called my doctor-sister in Michigan, but she didn’t answer. So I called the pediatrician’s after hours and started waiting the 1 – 2 hours it would take for them to get back to me. We looked up her symptoms and everything was pointing to appendicitis. My sister finally called me back and she had me poking her belly and answering a bunch of questions. She finally told me since it was her niece, she was advising me to take her to the ER. She said she was 99% sure that’s what the pediatrician would tell us to do as well.

So at 10:50 Sunday night we loaded up the kids and headed to the ER. Hubby and both wanted to be there, no question, so my son had to tag along for the ride. When we got there, thankfully it was not busy at all and the staff was so very nice to us. Our nurse in particular was so very warm, and even brought little teddy bear presents for both of the kids.

They ran all the tests needed to try to rule out appendicitis, including X-Rays and blood work (they put an IV in her which she was so very not happy about), and it turns out she has a UTI. They couldn’t say she definitely didn’t have appendicitis, but they wanted to treat the UTI and watch her symptoms over the next day to be sure. So we left there about 1:30 Monday morning, picked up her prescriptions, and headed off to bed. We slept in until about 8:00 and then took the kids to the sitter’s and headed off to work. I was at work no more than ½ hour when my sitter called telling me she had thrown up.

So we headed to the pediatrician’s office who informed me that her stomach was very confused by everything and to go home and rest. Unfortunately, she couldn’t keep anything down all day, including her medicine. So her temperature was climbing. I stayed home with her again on Tuesday and she started keeping Sprite down and her medicine. Her fever would still come back (at one point it was 105.8) but Motrin brought it right back down. She was even able to eat some food last night. By the afternoon she was running around and dancing and playing again, which was so nice to see!

So today she’s back at the sitter’s and so far I haven’t gotten a call :) I really hope she’s better and we fight this infection and she can get back to normal! She’s bee such a trooper and I know all she wants to do is get better!