This is what Bella has been doing all day long, every day for the past almost two weeks. Sleeping. This child normally doesn’t even sleep through the night, let alone all day long.
Everything started the week before Labor Day weekend with Bella coughing at night. We assumed it was teething. On that Friday, August 31st, she got her first fever. We still thought it was teething. That weekend we headed up to Nebraska for Jesse’s 15 year class reunion.
They both did pretty good on the ride up and down, but that weekend Bella continued to continuously battle fevers, and started skipping meals.
By the time we got back home, we figured it might be a little something more than teething.
On Tuesday Sept. 4th, we took Bella into the doctor for the first time. They really didn’t seem to think anything was majorly wrong. Maybe it was a flu virus and it might have turned into an ear infection, because it looked like there might be a little discharge in her ear. So we started a round of antibiotics and were told if the fever didn’t go away in 24 hours we were to come back in.
Thursday she still felt warm, but wasn’t registering a temperature. She still wasn’t really eating much besides breakfast, and was still sleeping all day long, but we did manage to venture out that evening for a work sponsored family event. It was a bowling night with my company. Bella seemed to be enjoying watching the bowling lanes, and impressively held her head up completely on her own for 45 minutes or so.
During some of this time period of her holding her head up, we were actually sitting behind her eating.
For the people there that didn’t know us, or Bella very well, they must have thought we were completely inconsiderate parents who just left their child facing away from them and ignoring her. But since she was obviously entertained enough to keep her head up, there was no way we were going to turn her around!
On Friday morning she woke up and for the first time was cool to the touch. We thought things must be finally improving. We actually had her yearly IEP meeting, which I will talk about later, and although she was a little fussy, she made it through. She then proceeded to sleep the rest of the day away once we got home and again wouldn’t eat anything more than half a bowl of food for breakfast.
Saturday marked the first day she started fussing and wouldn’t eat ANYTHING. She would periodically cry and get upset. When this was happening I felt inside her mouth, and that made her more upset, so we would put orajel on her teeth, and sure enough she would soon stop crying. This made us question if it was only teething that was causing all this pain. On one hand it would be good, meaning we hadn’t been letting her carryon with some major illness we couldn’t diagnose. But it would also be very bad, because she has four more molars to come in, and if this happens every time her teeth move (her previous molars took over a year to come in, and caused lots of problems over that year), then we were in for a real treat.
Sunday the fevers came back again. This would then be the 7th day she had fevers. We began questioning if we shouldn’t take her back into the doctor and run her through some tests to make sure we hadn’t missed something.
This morning we took her back in. She was running another fever while she was in the doctors office. We carried her up to the office and poor Bella was crying as we were waiting. I’m sure we worried a bunch of other parents in the office as they saw this “bigger” girl being listless and having to be carried as she cried and sounded hopeless.
Once we were taken back we explained everything that was going on and they decided to run a few tests. The first was to catheter her so they could get a urine sample and see if she had a bladder infection. That test came up inconclusive. Next they pricked her finger to see if she had some type of bacterial infection. That test came back with elevated levels, but not high enough they could get a clear picture. So we had to get blood drawn so that they could run a culture. As we were waiting around in the office, if people were gone for more than five minutes she would be asleep in my arms. If they were there and messing with her, she would be crying. When they came to take her blood, they had to try two different people and stick her two different times. and of course each time they stuck her, they didn’t immediately find the vein, but had to move the needle around for minutes to try and get it. I felt so horrible for her, and had to tightly clamp myself around her the whole time to try and keep her from moving. Lastly they decided to give her an antibiotic by shots in her legs in case we were dealing with any of the above mentioned infections.
So after being in the office for more than two hours we were finally able to leave. Once home Bella again proceeded to sleep the whole day, and again got a fever this evening.
We go back tomorrow to the office to see if the culture shows us anything. Hopefully we can get something figured out soon. Because this is horrible for her, and definitely taking its toll on the rest of us. Okay everyone but this one!
Oliver’s favorite place to read books is curled up with one of the dogs. And they are nice enough to let him lounge on them. At least someone has time to pay attention to him.
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