So Ashlyn got to experience her first traumatizing ER visit on Oct. 15, 2011. She had been running a fever since Thursday that kept spiking as soon as the medicine would start to burn off in her system. At first I wasn't too concerned because it was only around 100 and she acted fine as long as the medicine was working. But by Saturday it had gone up to 104.6 and that was with us still alternating medicines. I just wasn't sure what to do so I finally decided to call the Urgent Care here in town to see what they thought. I didn't want to take her in just to hear that there was nothing I could do and waste my time and money as well as the dr's time. When I called to see what the nurse thought I should do with her, she was of course with a patient and so I just left a message with the receptionist and my number. I got a call back a few minutes later with the nurse saying that the doctor didn't even want to see her with a fever that high and to get her over to the ER.
Josh was good enough to stay home with Kaylee so I got Ashlyn dressed and told her to say bye to daddy. Then we headed off to the ER. When I got there it was nice because no one else was there so we didn't have to wait long to be seen.
Poor little Ashlyn didn't what would happen and I didn't either. I knew they'd want a urine sample and was hoping they'd just give her a potty bag and not the catheter. They checked her temperature and got a reading of 107, holy cow that was high! They gave her some more medicine and did a strep test to rule out that possibliity. They then decided that they needed to do the catheter because it was faster than letting her go in the potty bag. I laid her down and she was fine until the nurse came in and tried putting in catheter. Of course it was traumatizing and the nurse was unsuccessful. She had to have another nurse come in to help and it took two of us to hold her down while the nurse did the catherter. I felt so bad for her and even though I know what she was going through I couldn't help her understand why she was having to go through the pain of it all. After they were done. I got her pull-up back on and had to hold her for a long time. At this point the nurse came back in with some stickers and a cute little bear. It helped a little bit but as you can imagine Ashlyn did not want anything to do with these people and kept asking to go home.
We then had to do 2 chest x-rays. Even though these aren't invasive it still scared her after what she had just been through. I had to do a lot of coaxing to get her to hold still and let the tech to his job. Finally after about a half hour of convincing her that it was a big camera and looking at the board that lines up that the techs use kind of looked like a pumpkin (she found the eyes, nose, and mouth) we were able to go back to our room.
The Dr. came in after the x-rays and labs came back and told me he felt that it was pneumonia but wasn't serious enough yet to admit her. He gave me an antibiotic prescription and then had the nurses come in and give her a shot of rocephin. Needless to say they had to bring in more stickers and a sucker this time. He told me to make a follow-up appointment with our regular doctor on Monday, but if things worsened before then to obviously come back in.
We spent the next 45-60 minutes at Wal-mart waiting on her prescription to be filled and getting her some popsicles. I felt so bad for her. She just cried because of everything that had happened. It's so hard to explain to a 2 1/2 year old why they had to do those things.
I took her back in on Monday and am glad to report that everything turned out okay. The anitibiotic that was prescribed is one of the best ones out there to help get rid of the pneumonia if got early enough. Our Dr. was surprised that the ER doctor hadn't admitted her with that high of a fever, but I'm glad to say things started turning around for Ashlyn.
The only thing now that is hard is doing diaper changes after bowel movements. She'll come and tell me that she's stinky and then say "Mommy don't hurt me" over and over again because she's afraid I'll hurt her when when I have to wipe. This has been very challenging for me and I feel bad to because I would never hurt my child intentionally. I know the experience is still fresh in her mind and am hoping that she will be able to forget about it sooner than later.
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