There must be opposition in all things

Remember how Sunday was my birthday?  And it was wonderful and peaceful and relaxing and everything I needed it to be?

Well, what I didn't tell you is that Max had been brewing a fever since Friday afternoon. 

So Sunday night, when his fever spiked somewhere between Death Valley in August and African desert, I decided that it was time for a trip to our pediatrician.

He slept in until 9 am Monday morning.  That right there was enough to tell me how sick he really was, because never in my whole parenting career have any of my children slept until 9 am.  And then he woke up. 

And then the whole neighborhood could tell that he was awake because he started to s.c.r.e.a.m.  And scream.  And scream.  And he didn't stop screaming until about 5 minutes before we got to the doctor's office.

I have to confess to being more than a little worried.  I had wrapped him in a blanket and he was visibly shaking, his face was grayish, and then he started screaming again.  Turns out, there was a positive side to all the screaming.  Even if your doctor's office calls when you're on the way to tell you they're double booked, they tend to get you right in when your child is making enough noise to wake the dead.

So despite having ear tubes, the doctor discovered that Max has an ear infection.  The sweet pediatrician was ready to wrap her diagnosis into a neat and tidy bow when I asked her to swab Max's throat for strep.  "You know," she replied, "Kids this young don't usually get strep." 

That's when I told her that the baby had gotten strep when he was the ripe old age of two months.  And when she swabbed Max's throat, it was an unmistakable positive for strep.  Then I mentioned that he hadn't had a wet diaper in almost 12 hours, and that got us a do-not-pass-go pass to the Park City Hospital for IV hydration. 

It also forced me to make yet another series of my favorite phone calls ever.  First to my husband: "Hi honey, can you meet me in the ER so I don't have to hold two screaming babies at once?"  and then to a series of violin students: "Hi (insert name of violin student here), my son is headed to the ER, can we reschedule your lesson?"

I told Max we were headed to the hospital to help him feel better.  His response?  "No hopistal today."  If he hadn't been so sad, the mispronunciation would have been cute.

We got to the hospital, and I started  checking Max in, and he started begging Tom for water.  Tom got him a water bottle and he promptly guzzled half of it.  They got us back to a room, assesed his vitals, and watched him drink some more water and down a pedialyte popscicle like it was the best thing ever.  We raised our eyebrows at each other and asked the nurse if we could avoid turning the two year old into a human pincushion (last time we went down this road it took them 7 sticks with a needle to finally get the IV inserted.) as long as he kept drinking.  She agreed, gave us 20 minutes to have him produce a wet diaper, and turned on Elmo's world for Max.

Twenty minutes and one wet diaper later, we were very gratefully on our way home.

I thought we were done.  A few doses of antibiotics, a little bottle of ear drops and we'd be good as new, right?

Ha!  Did I forget who I was dealing with?

I went to give him his second dose of medicine tonight to find a rash all over his little body.  Of course it was 5 minutes after his pediatricians closed for the night, so I got to speak with the very nice pediatrician on call, who was neither our pediatrician nor the one we saw yesterday, (and what does it say about us that I have the on-call number for our pediatricians programmed into my phone?) and she told me that it was probably an allergic reaction to the antibiotics and that I should bring him in tomorrow to be checked and to get him a new prescription.  Joy.

Did I mention that my husband is out of town again today?  At least this time, Max had the courtesy to land himself in the ER while my husband was in the same state.

So tonight, Max got a dose of ibuprofen.  Ian, who cut his first tooth today, got a dose of tylenol.  I consumed massive amounts of chocolate.   Here's hoping we get at least a little bit of sleep.