Sunday, June 13, 2010

Fevers

Towards the end of March I noticed that Emmalee sure had a lot of fevers (well, I noticed before then, but this is the first time I decided to do anything about it). I talked to my mom and she suggested making a log of when she had fevers. So I did. And it turns out that I wasn't imagining it! Emmalee has had a fever for 2-3 days a week every week since then. Earlier in the week I called the pediatricians office because Emmalee's eyes were looking funny (she had red-rimmed eyes and bags under the eyes, but not just when she was tired). They told me it was probably allergy related and asked if anything else like fever, runs, vomiting or anything unusual was also going on. I told the nurse she had a fever, but that's not anything out of the ordinary because she has had a fever every week since the last week of March. She has had strep throat once, and has cut about four teeth since then (three of them in the same week as the strep), but besides that most of the time she has no other symptoms. The nurse told me I should take her in to see our pediatrician while she had the fever so we could make sure it wasn't anything and discuss the frequency with the doctor. So I took her in for a 9:30 pm appointment (I was actually in the doctors office then hospital for a CT scan for me before then) and we were at the office until 11:30. I am grateful for after-hours. The performed a straight catheter on her to get a urine sample and did a rapid strep and throat culture. Everything was normal. The pediatrician was pretty upset by the fevers with no apparent cause. He was also very disturbed by their frequency and consistency (they are almost always Monday and Tuesday, sometimes into Wednesday). So, now we get to keep a diary every day of what she eats, when she naps/sleeps how long and how well, when she fusses, and bowel movement information. I am back at work full-time so unfortunately much of this task falls to my sister-in-law who watches her for us. At the beginning of July Emmalee will have blood work done and then at her one year check our pediatrician will decide based on the diaries and blood work whether or not to send us to a pediatric immunologist. Joy.
On a happier note, Emmalee started walking about two (maybe three) weeks ago. She started right before I went back to work full time, so I got to see her start walking around independently. I love it! However she now gets into even more (I didn't think that was possible) and she also now climbs onto everything. It's exciting to see my baby move on to being a toddler, but I miss the baby stage (though not all the crying).
We got family photos done a couple weeks ago, so when I get those I'll have to post pictures. There were some absolutely beautiful ones of Emmalee.

2 comments:

Leslie@leserleeslovesandhobbies said...

Whoa! That is just crazy. Maybe there's something at church that is causing it, since they seem to start on Mondays. Bummer. You've really been going through the wringer with this little girl, haven't you? Good luck!

Kari and Steve said...

So what Leslie said just made me think of something. DOesn't Joel's dad have some allergy thing that is really set off by being at the church, like from the cleaning stuff they use. The red-eyes makes me think allergies. Poor Emmalee with all these allergies, and poor you guys for having to deal with it. I can't even handle dealing with my own allergies much less anyone elses. I hope the drs/ and you guys can figure out what is causing the fevers.