UTI

Yup, that's what the emergency room told us Lily had.

I was leaving work later than usual and my husband calls to say that Lily is burning up with a 104 degree temp and she is screaming into the phone. I tell him to give her some tylenol and I would be right home. This isn't the first time that she's had a high temp, but usually she had other symptoms, cough, runny gunky nose... Nothing this time so I immediately thought a urinary tract infection. I called our daycare provider and she said that Lily was fine for her, ate, played, slept well and was in great spirits all day. Then she says, "Oh I told you that Christopher had strep throat on friday right?" Umm, no... Come to think of it, I saw Christopher there on Friday and on Monday and Tuesday. Great Lily was totally exposed. By the way, Christopher's mother is a nurse and his father is an EMT. But she was eating crackers when I got home and she was eating crackers. Not something a child with a sore throat would do if she had strep. So we head off to the emergency room. Her fever was coming down, by the time we got to Ft. Belvoir it was 101.8. 2 and a half hours later we are seen by the doctor. Let me mention at this time that my husband and I were freaking out about the game. I called my dad. He says rain delay, then he turns on NESN and sees that the game has been postponed to August 18th at 1pm. Phew.

Lily and I are called from the waiting room into the er and brought to a bed. We were there for about 45 minutes to an hour. I took my shoes off and laid down with Lily and at some point a nurse came over and covered us up with a sheet. The entire time we were there I couldn't help but over hear a conversation between an elderly chief warrant officer and the doctor assigned to his case. He had just had major back surgery for an apparent fall off of a 10 foot ladder. I say apparent b/c he does not remember actually falling, but he was able to tell the doctor in great detail that he fell from the ladder, crashed through a bush and bent a 6 foot chain link fence, and amazingly other details. Since his back surgery he was hooked up to a catheter. 2 weeks after this fall that he didn't remember, he had some pains in his back that weren't going away. He asks his wife to look at his back. She finds that his lower back is entirely black and blue. He had been walking around with a broken back for 2 weeks and didn't know it. He had been to the urologist 4 weeks before for a change of his bag and a "flush." He talked at great length about the pain in his stomach, scrotum, about how he took his privates (Oh he didn't use the word "privates," but the other p word repeatedly.) out to pee and then remembered that he had a catheter and his privates were of no use, how he has no feelings in his buttucks, yet his rectum is sticking out 2 inches, that he can grab it with a thumb and a finger and his rectum is very tender and very painful to the touch. Yeah, I didn't need to know that. So he now has 2 nurses and a doctor and finally he is able to release the contents of his bladder into his plastic bag and 400 cc's come out. He bp drops 30 points and he is now feeling quite ill and "woosy." I've just about had it at this point. Why did they bring us back there just to lay on a bed for an hour? We could have at least have been watching the Orioles play.

So finally the doctor examines Lily. She says, "What's going on here?" I said that Lily had a 104 fever, it came on suddenly, I gave her some tylenol and it was slowly going down. I told her about the other child in her daycare that had strep throat. "Well, I wouldn't be too concerned with high fevers. Babies temperatures will spike." Um what? 104 fever isn't a big deal? She checks her ears and picks out a huge clump of ear wax. Oops. They are clear, she checks her throat, then she decides that she'll need a urine specimem. Um what about a throat culture? Who's the doctor here? I need to go to med school.

20 minutes later a woman comes over with some motrin for her fever, that we haven't re-checked for almost 3 hours. We then wait another 20 minutes for a nurse to come over and attach a little baggy for urine collection. An hour later, after a short nap, tickle session and a short walk around the floor, we have a sample. An hour after that, we find that she tested positive. Positive for what I say? "The urinary tract infection." She told me that Lily still needed to go to her scheduled appointment today for a follow-up. After an aggravating 45 minutes of driving lost around Ft. Blevoir we arrive safely at home just under 1 am. What a night...

So this morning we head to Ft. Myer's for her scheduled appointment. We are told by the nurse that we are not supposed to bring Lily into the office when she has a fever. I knew that but I was told by the emergency room doctor to bring her in for a follow-up. Geez. We answer the routine questions, Does Lily stack blocks, does Lily know where her nose is, where her belly button is, does she have a vocab of 3-6 words, and on and on and then we are seen by another doctor who has trouble articulating in English. Lily completely looses it when the stethescope comes out. Dr. Kim looks at the results of the urine test from the emergency room and decides that since there are only a few white blood cells present, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is a UTI. I tell her that it may be strep. "Did they check for that last night?" I said no. "Did you tell them about the boy in daycare?" I said yes. She does a 30 minute culture, negative. She also did a 3 day culture and they will call with the results and the emergency room will call if the antibiotic that she has been prescribed will be effective against the type of bacteria that grows on her urine culture. Phew.

As of an hour ago her, temp was 102. I gave her some more tylenol and I'm about to check to see if it has come down. She's in generally good spirits though and I got a day off from work.