recent drama.

the weeks are flying by WAY faster than i can even begin to record them all. i have lots of fun, awesome stuff to write about, but figured i would get my quick trauma post out of the way first. also, i have at least a month worth of pictures sitting on various memory cards and personal computers (i.e. not my work computer, on which i currently type while on a conference call (shhhh)) and would like to add some of those to my posts.


so, the last couple of weeks have brought a little bit of drama our way. in hindsight, everything has worked out just fine and we have been remarkably fortunate . but, for posterity, i write.

last friday (or two fridays ago, who's counting) - march 30th - we had some friends in town to visit. they arrived mid-day friday, so i was going to pick emme up and then meet them at our house so we could head to an early-ish dinner. i left work exuberant - it was a glorious day, it was friday, and i'd just wrapped up about 74 things at work that had been hanging over my head. fabulous. i get emme from her class, gather all her gear (seriously, how much gear can someone her size accumulate?) - cloth diapers, dirty clothes, nap mat, lunch box - and load her and said gear in to the car. i drive to the exit and turn on my left turn signal, just as i do every other day. there was a decent amount of traffic, so i waited for a little bit and then saw an opening to my left, after a large grey car. i looked to the right to make sure i was clear (i was), so i glanced left again as the grey car was passing me, then i began to drive forward while looking right again. i turn my head back to face forward and i am driving directly in to a motorcyclist. i slam on the brakes as he tumbles off his bike and the motorcycle slides into the far lane. i'm stunned at this point; i reverse quickly, crank up the ac for emme, roll down windows, and fly out the car to see the guy. thankfully, he was wearing a helmet and there was a witness right there who had already gotten to him before i did. the driver was already moving around and the witness was on the phone with the police. i knelt down to try to attend to the guy - encourage him not to move, etc. - and he looks at me and says "i need for you to get the f--- away from me right now". this is when i lost it - i went back to my car and was shaking and flipping out, trying to hold it together. within seconds, the guy was walking to the sidewalk and smoking a cigarette, so i was happy to see he seemed mostly ok, physically. the police showed up within minutes, as did EMS. the guy refused medical attention, and his bike was not majorly impacted. the police were the nicest team of guys ever - they were super professional, compassionate, and thorough. they decided not to issue a ticket to either of us, which was kind of amazing. the accident was my fault, but since it seemed likely that the motorcyclist was tailgating and i was completely flipped out already, i think they decided writing me a ticket was unnecessary.

anyway, all things considered, this was not a bad accident. i have never been in a car accident before, and i am not anxious to get into another one, ever. i have NO idea, still, how it could have happened - i have gone over and over the whole series of events again and again. i am such a careful driver - i drive TOO defensively sometimes, according to justin - especially with emme in the car. so many things could have been so much worse with this whole thing, though, so i am just very grateful everything worked out the way it did, if it had to happen. he could have not been wearing a helmet, he could have crashed off his bike in to oncoming traffic, he could have rolled onto my car and somehow injured emme. it just could have been way, way bad. as my brother says, there is no margin of error with a motorcycle, so we were both very very lucky. my insurance is handling everything, and i am hopeful that he is back to 100%.



so that was the kick-off to that weekend. i'll summarize the fun stuff from that weekend later. on to this past weekend - easter!

we had a flight to florida early saturday morning. we were going to meet my parents for a few days and celebrate easter on the beach. i love the beach. thursday night, the night we were supposed to be packing, etc., i came down with fever of 102 (i never get sick, other than when i got the plague back in november). i literally could barely move - i got emme to bed and then just wrapped myself in blankets on the couch, feeling absolutely miserable. i was in bed before 9 and my fever broke at some point in the night, though i was not 100% on friday. i picked ek up on friday afternoon and she was fine. coughing and snotty, but that's par for the course with our daycare-going kiddo. we also had an appointment with her ENT to look at her ears and he said she looked fantastic. she struggled a tiny bit going to bed that night because her congestion makes it hard for her to breathe while sucking her thumb. but, she did go down, and jb and i finished packing and house prep before i finally had to go lie down around 9 or 9:30. within seconds of my head hitting the pillow, the cries started. justin gave her a few minutes to see if she would calm herself down, but to no avail. he went in and rocked her for a while, but she freaked out again right when she went back in to her crib. he rocked her again, same situation. i went in and rocked her, same thing. finally, around 10:30 or so, i told justin it was time to just shut it down. with our flight being super early the next morning, i figured it was fine to let her sleep with us - any sleep was better than the back-and-forth to her bedroom all night. i held her on my chest, mostly upright, for about 30 minutes, hoping to let all the phlegm drain. i could feel her relax and fall asleep, so i gingerly rolled her to the side on to our mattress. she immediately rolled on to her tummy and began crying hysterically, then she threw up all over our bed. i got her up and brought her in to the bathroom while justin worked to start cleaning up our bed. at this point, it's 11 or 11:30 and she now has a crazy high fever (started right when she puked). great news. we headed to the couch, where emme and i spent the remainder of the night, her sleeping fitfully, me not sleeping much at all.

the flights to florida were uneventful - she is such a great little traveler. i kept her medicated with ibuprofen, which kept her fever at bay all day. saturday night, her fever got high again, but i just kept her medicated, thinking it was probably something viral since she didn't seem to have any other symptoms. easter morning, we woke up and her fever was too high to go to church - i didn't want her exposed to all those other people, nor did i want them exposed to her. justin stayed home with her, and we went back to pick them up before heading to brunch at my aunt and uncle's house. i took her temp then and it was 104.2 - very high for the morning, but still responding to the ibuprofen. the rest of sunday was pretty low key - she took a nap, but was in good spirits and acting completely normal.

sunday night, around 11 or so, i think, she woke me up and i picked her up and brought her in to bed with me and justin. her body was pretty cold - i was initially excited about that, thinking the fever had finally broken, but then i noticed she was shivering and her lips were purple. i wrapped her up next to me and kept trying to warm her up, but she kept shaking. i was starting to get flipped out and wondering what to do, so i handed her to justin while i tried to find the number for my insurance's ask-a-nurse number. she threw up phlegm all over justin and me, so we got her cleaned up and back on to my lap, covered in blankets. my first reaction was that she was having a febrile seizure, but it lasted SO long, and she was responsive to us throughout the whole episode. i got a nurse on the phone and told her everything that was happening and she said we needed to bring emme to the ER. so, i went and got my parents up and we grabbed what we could think of to grab (i'm pretty sure this consisted of a diaper and my insurance card). by the time we were driving, her temp had started to climb again (as the nurse had told me it would) and she wasn't shaking anymore. we got to the emergency room, got admitted, and ended up in a little room. mom and dad had to stay outside, so we texted them updates.

the nursing staff at the hospital was very nice. they took emme's temp and it was 105.4 - she has definitely never been that hot. they gave her motrin and a tylenol suppository and then began the battery of tests: heart rate, blood pressure, catheter for urinalysis, and blood draw. that was the worst - they tried to get the hep lock into her hand, but her veins were too tiny and they kept missing. they finally got it in to her foot/ankle. ouch. justin and i had to hold her down for each thing and just watch the big tears rolling down her cheeks. not fun. somewhere in the midst of all of this, we saw the doctor on call, dr. woolf. he was super nice, but also a bit stymied by our girl. her ears and throat looked good, her lungs sounded fine. he said that when the blood work came back, he would expect to see white blood cell counts around 15,000 (normal is 6,000-11,000), and then he would prescribe an antibiotic. based on that, he was hopeful that we could avoid a chest x-ray. 15 minutes later or so, the x-ray tech came by requesting to take emme for a chest x-ray. we were confused, based on what dr. woolf had just told us, but were informed that her wbc count was much higher than anticipated, so we needed the x-ray. a baby chest x-ray is not a fun procedure...they basically strap her in to a plastic tube that looks like a medieval torture device. poor bean. during the walk back to the room, dr. woolf told us that her wbc count was 35,000. later, when he came back to our room after getting all her test results, we learned that there was still no obvious source of infection that would be causing SUCH a high fever. he was very sweet with her - his suggestions were that she could have pneumonia that just wasn't presenting on the chest x-ray yet, or strep that he couldn't see yet, partially treated meningitis, or just something else. he brought up meningitis and said he could do a spinal tap, but then offered all the reasons why that wasn't really necessary and it probably wasn't meningitis (she was not lethargic, could move her head and neck, was drinking and eating a little). so, she got rocephin through her hep lock and a prescription for zithromax, and we were dismissed, with instructions to head to the pediatrician in the morning. we got about 3 hours of sleep and then headed to the pediatrician. he said she was fine...diagnosed a bacterial infection of unknown origin and said to keep giving her motrin and let her do whatever she felt like doing (swim, play on the beach, etc.). he also told me i didn't need to be concerned about meningitis or leukemia/lymphoma (i heard high wbc count and of course my mind went crazy). by monday afternoon, she was fever free and definitely on the up and up.

so, again, we were super lucky. i am bummed that 80% of our vacation was occupied by a sick bebe and very little sleep, but so so so thankful that she is just fine. her iron count was sort of low, according to the pediatrician, so we see our doctor on monday for a re-test and a potential therapeutic prescription for iron for her. all things considered, a scary ordeal, but we escaped relatively unscathed.