Not just your every day sniffles

Catie has had a cough for about a week and a half then started with a low grade fever Sunday morning, which kept us home from church. The fever went away with meds, but then returned with a vengeance on tuesday evening. I put her to bed at 8, checked on her at 9:30 when I was headed to bed. she seemed fine and even mumbled a sweet, sleepy "I love you" that brought tears to my eyes. Within a half hour, though, she was awake and crying and did so every half hour until I brought her into my bed at 11:30. (I had also given her more meds at that time.) I knew she wasn't feeling well, and thought that maybe being near us would help her sleep better.

Let me say, at this point, that I don't know why anyone chooses to have a "Family Bed". This doesn't seem to work for us. By 2:30, none of us had slept well and I decided to put Catie back in her own bed. She had fallen asleep in ours, I figured she would just konk out once she was in her own bed.

WRONG. It seemed like she knew exactly how long it would take me to relax from that "mom-adrenaline" rush and close my eyes b/c that's how long it was between crying.

from 2:30 to 4:00 am she was awake every 30 minutes crying. finally, I decided to get up with her and head downstairs. I gave her more meds at this point and she watched tv for about 2 hours. by 6 am the tylenol seemed to kick in well enough to put her back to bed. James had decided to call in to work so he could be home to help me since Lydia has slept ALL NIGHT. I slept from 6 - 7, when Lydia woke up. James got a little more sleep, but only until Catie woke up at 9am.

we were able to get an appointment for 2:15 with the NP, but I had decided not to give Catie drugs b/c I wanted to see how high her temp got. She sat on my lap for 2 hours just snuggling when she first got up and then spent the rest of the morning, just laying on the couch. I had been checking her temp with an axillary thermometer and I didn't trust it. I know to add a degree to whatever it says, but she seemed way hotter than that. Then I used our Temporal thermometer....ugh, i need to get rid of that thing. The first reading i got said 105.2. I FREAKED OUT!!!! As I was on the phone with the nurse, James was reminding me that that particular thermometer is very unreliable and he checked her 3 more times and got 102.5 twice. I know these things, though. If I had only stopped a minute to THINK I would've known that it was wrong. When my kids are sick, all my nursing education flies out the window. I gave her ibuprofen at that point. She ate a little bit of lunch and then slept for an hour before heading to the MD office.

She has pneumonia. The NP heard it and immediately listened to Lydia to make sure she didn't have it as well. She slept a little better night #2, but still not great. She still has a fever, but it's not nearly as bad as yesterday. If she still has a fever tomorrow, we have to take her back, but we'll see. Hopefully the Zithromax will do it's job.