Follow-up to the worst night ever

Whew. It's been a week. And it's only Thursday.

I am happy to report that L is officially recovered. But it was a tough road getting there. After The Worst Night of My Life on Sunday, L was still not himself. We were coming at the fever from all ends, with both Motrin and Tylenol (as recommended by the ER doc), and it seemed like it was just barely enough. We were keeping the fever away by only the teensiest, tiniest margin, and L certainly was still not acting normal. Instead of acting 100% sick and being all sleepy and cuddly, he was like 75% sick and was grouchy and irritable.

I truly felt for him. Not only because I'm his mom and I'm naturally hard-wired to feel almost physical pain when I'm watching him be so sick at such a young age, but because I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for him to be feeling so bad and being unable to communicate what exactly is wrong. If he has a headache and I'm stroking his hair trying to calm him, I'm probably exacerbating the problem but he can't tell me to knock it off.

So, we just kind-of floated through Monday. He did not have one speck of fever the entire day, so I thought we were probably well on our way to recovery.

Tuesday came and I had to go to work, so I took him to daycare. It was clear that he was still not feeling well, but since he did not have a fever when he woke up, and since there was no fever the day before, I figured it was just residual ickiness. So, I brought his Motrin with him to daycare and there he stayed, in all his fussy crankiness.

I explained everything that had happened to the daycare lady and told her to call me if he got a fever at any level and I'd come pick him up. I definitely did not (and still don't) want to be the cause of a viral outbreak at daycare.

Since no call came during the day, I figured all was well. I was going to call a number of times to check on him, but work was insane and the day got away from me.

Got home and D told me that L had a 101 degree fever at one point during the day and that the daycare lady had all but said she did not want L to be there the next day.

By then, I was at my wit's end. The only thing more frustrating than a sick baby is having a sick baby who has been sick for days and there is no reason or explanation as to why. It would have been pretty pointless to take him back to the doctor, since it was obvious that what he had was viral and there's not much you can do about that, outside of what we had already been doing. I felt drained and exhausted and grumpy.

And then D took L upstairs to change his diaper and a few seconds later I heard him call down, "Katie, come here."

And I thought, "Mother effer, what is it now?"

I got upstairs and D showed me the spotty rash that had broken out all over L's chest and stomach. And going through my mind was, "Mothereffmothereffmothereff are you effing kidding me right now eff eff eff."

I called my mom to look at it and she initially said scarlet fever, since that's what I'd had as a baby that caused my febrile seizure. We put L down for his nap and went downstairs to do the natural first step in diagnosing and fighting an illness - we Googled it.

And we stumbled across a reliable website that was discussing something called roseola. And as we went down the checklist of symptoms and signs, we checked off 9 out of 10. So I put a call into the doctor and he called me back half an hour later. And when he called, I told him we knew it was roseola and he said, "Yep".

And then he said, "And actually, roseola has a high correlation to febrile seizures." Great. So you'd think that one of the two doctors we saw would maybe tell us to look out for a rash because it could be roseola. Maybe not. Maybe only I think that.

The good news is that we are finally done and in the clear. The rash is like roseola's white flag. Once it presents, roseola surrenders and goes away. And the even better news is that, after having it once, most infants are immune to it and do not get it again. So here's hoping L is one of those "most infants".

After I learned that we were done, I was a different person. I was happy and chatty and even a little giddy. I think relief is a highly underrated feeling. You don't appreciate it as one of the truly good feelings until you are experiencing it, and then it's the best feeling in the world. Almost akin to the absence of pain when you get an epidural.

So thanks for all the thoughts and kind words about my last post. Hopefully we never have to experience anything like that again!