Hard day

We had a rough day yesterday, but thankfully, things are much better today.

We spent the entire afternoon in the ER with Z, running him through a battery of tests to try to figure out why he suddenly spiked a ridiculously high fever (it was 108.1 the first time I took it, and even when we stripped him down, gave him cold water to drink, and had him in the air conditioned room for 15 minutes, it was still over 106 degrees). He's been on antibiotics for 10 days to treat his ear/sinus infection, so it seemed even more strange that he would suddenly have such a high fever.

Z was such a brave boy, despite missing his nap and not having anything to eat other than a couple snack-sized bags of Goldfish crackers and Teddy Grahams. In the picture, you can see his cool red and purple armband, which is actually a red sock wrapped with purple tape. That was to keep him from pulling out the IV they inserted in his arm (poor boy!). He also had a chest x-ray and was checked over from head-to-toe by multiple doctors.  On the bright side, he got a bunch of truck stickers and a new penguin friend he named “Waddle Waddle”.

His preliminary blood work showed nothing more than an elevated white blood cell count, which they expected due to the fever. His chest is clear, so we know it's not pneumonia. He's in good spirits and isn't vomiting or having trouble with balance or moving his neck, so we know it's not meningitis. Since he's already on antibiotics, we're relatively certain it's a viral infection. But that's about all we know. The doctor will be watching his blood culture over the next couple of days to see if they can find anything else, but in the meantime, we're just supposed to give him Tylenol to keep his fever down and keep an eye on him. His pediatrician will be following up with us today and tomorrow to check on him.  Today he woke up singing, ate almost all of his breakfast, and has been running around and playing all morning. His fever is mostly gone (he's just below the 100.4 degree threshold for an "official" fever) and he seems to be feeling fine. I hope he continues to feel fine and his fever is gone for good, although I am worried about whatever caused him to have such a high fever.

In other news, he apparently finished reading his copy of "How To Sabotage Your Sibling's Big Day" and pulled the ultimate trump card. Because of his fever, we don't want to risk infecting other children with whatever he has. So, we've canceled Mei-mei's birthday party today. Luckily, she's too young to care. But if Z is already starting to sabotage her events now, at the ripe old age of 2.5 years, I'm really curious about what he'll do on her wedding day!