2/21/07

Vivien woke up this morning crying and clingy, but I didn't think too much about it. I took her to her MDO and she cried when we got there, so I called 15 minutes after I dropped her off to check on her. They said she stopped crying like 3 seconds after I left.

When I went to pick her up, she felt kind of warm. We hung out the rest of the afternoon and rested, but while I was cooking dinner she came up and asked me to hold her. She was burning up. I put her in the Maya Wrap and then took her temp. with the temporal thermometer and it was 102.6. So I called the pedi's office (it was after hours) and my pedi's partner answered the phone. I told her what was going on and since they are really protective of Vivien, she told me to take her to the ER or Acute Care Center right away.

So we headed over there and we got checked in. The nurse kind of rolled her eyes at me when I told her Vivien had been running a fever for a couple of hours. As if I didn't need to bring her in if that's all it was. I told her Vivien had a health history, and she asked what it was. When I told her that she had a heart defect and an aorta defect, she was like, "okay, is that it?" IS THAT IT????? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME???? She was rather unimpressed. She asked when her surgeries were and when I started to give her the actual date, she cut me off and told me she only needed to know the year. She completely trivialized the seriousness of the situation.

Well the doc came in and took the situation a lot more seriously. If Vivien gets any infection, it can turn to endocarditis. That can be fatal. So he decided to do a flu and strep screen. The nurses came in and swabbed her nose and throat. That was not pleasant. We waited and waited, and they came back to say they were negative.

The doc thought it might be viral, but with Vivien's history they wanted to be thorough. So they needed blood and urine. Well I begged and begged her to go potty. I took her twice, but she wouldn't pee. So they had to catheterize her. Jim and I had to restrain her while they did it. The first tube they tried to use was too big so we had to keep holding her down while they got a smaller one. Poor kid. Jim and I were both in tears. Then they had to take blood from her arm, so we had to restrain her again. It was awful. Every time we got her calmed down, they came in to do something else.

So the doc came back and told us that we were going to have to wait a few days for the results and that he'd be treating her with antibiotics for the time being. Then he said that he needed a throat culture. WHAT??? DIDN'T THEY JUST GET ONE FOR THE STREP???? Well, that wasn't enough. They needed another. So again here they come shoving these swabs down her throat. And she gags and almost throws up every time.

So they called us at about 10:15 with the first round of results. Her white blood cell counts are very low. This is usually consistent with a very sick child, but the doctor said she was too alert to be that sick. So we are waiting on the rest of the results.

This is the sucky part because they would dismiss this as viral for any other kid, but for Vivien we always have to go through a battery of tests. I just feel so awful for her. We tried to take her to get her ears pierced on Sunday, and as soon as they pulled out the rubber gloves she lost it. She thought she was getting shots, so we had to leave. I just hate that she has to go through so much. I feel so helpless.