Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Back to work? Just kidding...

So Tuesday morning he woke up burning up. I gave him some infant advil and debated about keeping him home and taking him to the doctor as soon as they opened which wasn't until 9am. Since I have to be at work at 7, I thought I'd just take him to daycare (the advil covering the fever) and see how the day went. At about 9:30 I called the daycare to check on him and they said he wasn't feeling well at all. So I called the pediatrician and made a 10:30 appointment and left work to go pick him up. I figured this way, I still got a couple of hours in and I could get ahead of any illness and get him on antibiotics early enough to take him into daycare today. The doctor did a throat culture on him and said it came back as negative, but he had an ear infection so I got the antibiotics and we spent yesterday afternoon snoozing together in bed. All went as planned until this afternoon.


Well, the daycare called this afternoon at about 3 to tell me that he had a fever of 103 and that I needed to come get him immediately. So I called the pediatrician’s office and the nurse there says she was about to call me because his throat culture came out of the incubator positive for strep. Of course, there were no doctors in there so she said to give him some tylenol immediately and then go to an urgent care and get myself checked too because I likely have strep too. When we got to the urgent care, of course he was his usual happy self and they didn’t think anything looked wrong but I insisted they take his temp and it was still 101. They were shocked that for as sick and snotty as he is how happy he seemed. They didn’t really “see” him though but said that the antibiotics I started him on yesterday may take 48 hours or so to really kick in and to keep giving him tylenol in the meantime to keep the fever down. They looked me over and took a throat culture and gave me a prescription for some antibiotics. They said they’d call with the results of the culture on Saturday. I guess there is a quick culture which the pediatrician did yesterday that isn’t as accurate or only tests for certain strains, and the other strains take some time to check. Whatever the case may be, we’re sick, and now I have to miss even more work.

4 comments:

  1. We're sick too....I'm telling you, it's the daycare. My baby seems to be improving but she's on antibiotics. I have no voice and can't swallow - hmmmm, maybe I have strep! Grrrr! Keep writing. So funny, you're ticking clock and I'm clock ticking and we're in the same place!

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  2. The antibiotics he's on for the ear infection will also cover the strep (it's a higher dose for ear infections than for strep). And your odds of having strep are only about 3% -- not as high as we previously suspected (siblings have a 15% chance of catching it).

    The rapid strep tests that we use in my office are quite reliable but we always do a culture as a back up if the rapid test is negative. It's not common that the rapid test is wrong, and there aren't multiple strains, but it does happen occasionally.

    Sorry you aren't feeling well but the good news is that the antibiotics should help quickly!

    Abby (a pediatric nurse practitioner)

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  3. No fun!!! So many sick kids & mommies in the SMC blog world lately! Hope you both feel better soon!

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  4. Strep was rampant in my area last winter and am starting to see it again at our preschool. My son and I passed it back and forth several times and were on several rounds of antibiotics each before we finally kicked it. I was MUCH sicker than he was.

    First day off of a 3 day weekend and my son is throwing up and stomach ache. Welcome to winter. Ugh!!

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