Let’s see. Let’s see… updates… hmmm
So since September Artemis has been fighting ear infections. Chain of events…
Double ear infections – Go to the pediatrician on a Friday.
We get Amoxicillin.
We break out in rash everywhere, but it doesn’t show up till she is at school Tuesday because she was on Benadryl the whole time for her allergies flaring up. She was clear, so I didn’t want her overmedicated if she didn’t need to be.
Off we go to After Hours type clinic.
We are given steroids and another antibiotic and it is decided she’s allergic to penicillin. (Which I didn’t know till then that DFil is allergic. I personally thought that was a kind of big one to know for Buddy and our kids.
Ears are still bothering her after this antibiotic. She runs fever later in the week at school and we are called.
We are off to the After Hours clinic again… where they give us another different antibiotic and told to follow up in 7 out of the 10 days with her pediatrician.
She’s able to go to school with Tylenol from all the diagnosis finally when they all say ear infection. I’ve missed quite a bit of work at this point either taking off to keep her, or leaving to bring someone a seat to get her, or leave to get her and bring her to someone to go back to work.
We follow up with pediatrician. She says it is time to consider tubes.
We are referred to ENT. We make an appointment for like a week later, see his nurse practitioner for a bit, and him for like 30 seconds. We set up for two weeks later to have adenoids out and tubes in.
We get them done on 11-13. She does fantastic. She barely even cried. They tell us to follow up in 10 days, so on Monday I make an appointment for the following Monday the 25th.
Buddy and I have a stomach bug Monday and Tuesday of that week but neither of the girl’s catches it.
Saturday night we head out for a movie. My dad has the oldest. Buddy’s cousin has the youngest with the ears. I get a text from the cousin about 10 minutes before the movies end telling me Artemis doesn’t feel well and just threw up. That she was running 100.3 fever with Motrin after an hour.
We rush there and apparently the text was a mistype. She was running 103 fever with Motrin still.
So off we go to the hospital. I had called her ENT emergency line (since those were symptoms to watch for on her ears though it had almost been the 10 days), and he said to be safe and go to the ER.
So this baby/toddler does not like to be restrained. She doesn’t like even just sitting in your lap long unless you have food.
Over the process of these 6 hours almost that we were in the ER, the most noise she made was when they held her down to put in her IV and to do a catheter for urine test, and it was still not even a 10th of the noise she would have usually made. She didn’t care that they poked, prodded, rectal thermometer, nothing. She just was so lethargic.
They did chest xrays, blood and urine test, a few other things. They finally decided it was just an ear infection possible coupled with the stomach bug we had had… though we both had it over about 36 hours almost 5 days before. But whatever. Motrin and Tylenol rotation, sleep, and a full fluid IV drip brought her temp down, and she seemed to feel better. I was livid though by the time we left. They told us for the two hours at the end they just needed to get us some antibiotics or a script. I get it. Things get hectic in the ER. But we had been there all night. We saw the amount of patients brought it and the amount of just sitting that was done by the staff. If it was me, I would have wanted to get that poor little 15 month old baby home to her bed if it was in my power. We were finally told they weren’t allowed to access those meds at night… um unless it was a policy implemented last night or today you already knew that but thanks for those extra 2 hours of us just sitting here.
So more antibiotics. We follow up with the ENT the next day since technically it was Sunday but the time we were done. Monday they said yes they were still infected and gave us drops.
Used the drops.
Fast forward to most of December where her ears drained… and drained… and drained. My mom ended up taking her back to the ENT on 12/28 because they had started smelling funny. They had to clean so much gunk out that had built up around the tubes cause they were draining so much.
More drops. She develops a rash by that afternoon. It’s very light only on her back, so watched it since my mom had given her straight peach juice. She’d never had it, so we thought allergies.
Next morning she had tiny dots on her hands.
They call me from school to come get her because they have turned into blisters.
Back to After Hours clinic… though it started on her back… she has hand foot and mouth.
We are now as of yesterday starting to drain again… Really?
I just want the poor thing to be well.
In other news, Allegiant air released a set of flights that was 39$ one way to Tampa. They also have one that is one way to Sanford for 45. Doing the math for baggage and whatnot it’s about 500$ which is what I’m budgeting for rental car and the gas and food to get there and back. The only problem with those is, a.) We are limited on what we can bring by flying cause you pay for everything even carry on. B.) We would have to get to MCO to take DME or All-star. So renting a car for a day is about 40$ then there’s the getting it dropped off and back into the Disney bubble. Then reversing it to get back to the airport. My thoughts are it is just too much trouble. Leaving out of BR about 2pm gets us there just after midnight/1am which is what time Buddy stays up till half the time anyway. Artemis would probably sleep from diner till we get there. Alexa is cool as long as she can watch movies. Return would be the same. We could leave 2/3pm and drive home. We pick up the hour we lost for time zone, and buddy was planning to take the 8th off anyway to rest. It’s his biggest day of the week for work, so he didn’t want to come off vacation and be slammed and feel like he was never on vacation.
Anyone want to try to talk me into that flying plan or think driving is better?
