Fever and Toxic Waste......

Yesterday after work I ran home to discover that life had become a bit of a three-ring circus.  My mom, contrary to plan, wanted me to come and pick her up.  JuJuBee and Boo were there, hanging out with Babygirl.  The tutor had just left, and Hubby was heating up soup and trying to organize grilled cheese sandwiches.  I hadn't packed yet. 

I sent Hubby to get mom, set JuJuBee to making grilled cheese, Babygirl to Boo-minding and table setting.  I ran off to fold laundry, sort my meds, and pack.  We all came together at the dinner table at about the same time, so it was a good distribution of work to workers.

We arrived in Philly last night without incident.  I dropped my mom off at my brother's house and went on to my sister-in-law's, arriving around 10:30.  Babygirl had slept much of the way down, and at 11 complained of headache and nausea.  I gave her tylenol and told her to go to bed. 

After I'd spent some time catching up with my sister-in-law, hearing about Grampa Mike's final days and funeral, I went to bed and discovered Babygirl awake, and shaking like a leaf.  I took her temperature through her chattering teeth - 99.3. 

I frankly hate it when patients claim '99' to be a 'fever' because they are usually '96.'  But Babygirl usually IS 96, to the point where I was beginning to feel that the thermometer might not be accurate.  And she had just taken tylenol an hour earlier.  But it was the fact that the chill lasted nearly half an hour after that that made me call the doctor on call.

The response was as expected - the temp's not that high, keep an eye on her, call if it gets worse.

An hour later, it did.  I awoke from a doze to the sound of gagging and escaped the bed just as Babygirl tossed a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of chicken soup (along with about a gallon of some OTHER fluid) onto my sis-in-law's bedroom floor.  The stench was awe-inspiring.

Let me tell you that it doesn't matter what I do for a living.  I am not good at snot and vomit.  It's all I can do not to join in and add to the problem, and I suspect it's why God sent me kids who rarely vomit.  But I'm the parent, Hubby was at home (lucky dog), and I've got a clearly very ill little girl and a HUGE, noxious puddle of toxic waste to deal with. 

Her temp at that point was 100.6 - not high but over the official 100.4 fever definition.  I cleaned up, called the on-call doctor back, stuffed our contaminated belongings in plastic, our suitcases in the van, rinsed parts of Babygirl's hair (ewwwww) and made off for the hospital.  At 2:30 AM the 45-90 minutes at rush hour trip took 29 minutes.

At the ER her temp hit 103.6.  They've given her the major antibiotics and fluids, chatted with neurology about whether they wanted to do the spinal tap before they gave them, spoken with infectious disease, pharmacy, and nephrology. 

We are being moved to the floor soon, none the wiser about why she got so sick so suddenly (especially since she's barely left the house in a month) but well taken care of.

I guess we're going to miss our transplant team appointment at 9:30.  But that's okay.  We already know the kidney is fine.

DeeDee