Not Panicky Under Pressure!

Who would have thought I'd actually have a reason to use the 'life threatening situations' tag so soon after Livvy created it?

Roy has had a runny nose for the past few days. Last night he slept poorly all night and when he woke up at 6am this morning, he had a fever. Tylenol brought it down for a little while, but he was breathing really fast, and the fever came right back up within a few hours. So I called the Dr. As luck would have it, the Dr's office closes early on Wednesdays, so all I got was the stupid answering service. I made them page Dr. Stonerock, and received a call back within a few minutes. Fever over 103, fast breathing, lethargic, not responding to Tylenol... Dr. says take him to emergency room just to be on the safe side.

So with less than ten minutes before I was supposed to give a presentation to the entire AOL Channels dev team on the project I'm leading, I had to IM my boss with "Can't do presentation. Have to go to emergency room. Tell them I'm sorry. Bye." And we were off.

Luckily, there wasn't anyone ahead of us when we arrived, and we were seen immediately. And that's where the fun began. Dose of Motrin to bring the fever down (BTW - I didn't know this, but you can mix Tylenol and Motrin together to get better fever control - just alternate the doses every 3 hours.) Probe in the butt to take Roy's temperature - 3 different times over the course of the visit, and boy he hated that! Tie a pulse sensor to his toe that I had to spend the next 3 hours trying to keep him from removing. Stick him with an IV to 'rehydrate' him, even though he'd already polished off 4 sippy cups that morning. X-Ray his chest - which Russ got to take him in for, and I could hear Roy screaming down the hall, since they had to strap him down to do it.

Finally, the verdict comes in, and Roy has pneumonia. Dose of antibiotics through the IV, and then wait another half hour after that for the nurse to come back and remove it, and the tape removal resulted in much screaming and crying as well. Four hours straight of keeping the kiddo from ripping out the IV or the pulse sensor and trying to keep him from full-on hysterics, which largely entailed pacing a two foot area and swaying with the kiddo in my arms. Damn but my back hurts now!

So now Roy is on both Tylenol and Motrin and antibiotics for the next ten days. I'm proud to say I didn't cry once. We'll be staying in and taking it easy for the next week or so, though.