So, I mentioned that Lu woke up sick on Halloween. As kids do, she was up and down with fever. She threw up once, and her fever never got much above 102, but she was very puny and complained about headache. My immediate thought was strep, because those are the exact symptoms Z had when he had strep (which made him about as sick as he'd been up to that point, and incidentally he was just about her age when he got it). The weekend went on and she stayed mostly on the couch, puny, complaining about her head hurting. She never once mentioned her throat hurting, and when I looked in there, I didn't see any redness, swelling or anything else to indicate her throat was involved, so I started thinking maybe the flu. I called the doctor on Monday and the nurse (not my usual nurse, for the record) felt she may have a fever virus and some allergy or sinus trouble (she did have the slightest of a runny nose, but really doesn't have a problem with seasonal allergies). My gut was not comfortable with this decision, but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and give her a little more time.
By Tuesday, she was no better, so I called back, talked to my regular nurse, and made an appointment for Nick to take her in. When he did, she tested positive for strep. Yay! A diagnosis, and one with a very clear and effective treatment. At this point, I am feeling better, although still feeling uncertain because she has not complained once about her throat.
She started a heavy dose of amoxicillin on Tuesday, had a dose Wednesday, and Thursday. My parents were going out of town Thursday, so she came to the office with me for the afternoon. Mom left her with all her favorite foods, but after she ate a bit, she started getting tired.
I made her a pallet, and around lunchtime, I offered to take her to get something else to eat, but she said she just wanted to sleep, which she did, for 3 hours. I realized at this point that she wasn't getting any better.
I called the pediatrician again, and my doctor was out of the office, so they said stay the course with the antibiotics, which I did not, instead I called her in Augmentin and gave her a dose that night and the next morning, thinking maybe there were some other bugs going on besides strep and that I had to do something.
Friday, she perked up a bit, but was clearly still sick, and still complaining about her head, but also her neck and seemed to be limited in her neck movement. When I went in, my doctor drew blood, found that she had a high white blood cell count indicating infection, but could not determine where the infection was coming from. Her ears were clear, throat (again) looked fine, nose clear. He was stumped.
The final thing he had her do was give a urine sample to see if she had a UTI. We knew at this point it was unlikely because of her lack of urinary symptoms, but we had to do it to rule it out.
He'd examined her neck and felt it wasn't like she had meningitis, as she could look to the left and down fine, but finally after we did the urine sample again, he noticed she wasn't able to look up very far or to the right. He consulted quickly with an ENT, and told me it appeared she may have an abscess in her neck. Abscess in her neck? What? How? Where?
Then, he said she needs to go to the ER. Okay, now you're scaring me. He said she'd probably have to have a CT and that it would be a "hoopla." Well, sure, we love hooplas.
So, we left and went straight to Children's ER. Nick, of course met us there, and the hoopla began.
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