Sarah Would Have Felt Better with George Clooney as Our Doctor

Nicholas is almost two years old, so the novel experiences are coming less frequently. But every once in a while we get a doozy. Last night, for instance, we got to do our first (of hopefully very few) middle-of-the-night trip to the ER. And I'll preface it for the worried that Nicholas is now feeling much better and is generally on the mend.

So we went back to the ENT specialist yesterday morning, and it's looking increasingly likely that Nicholas is headed for ear tubes. Fine. The doctor also put him back on antibiotics, which both Sarah and I were uncomfortable with, but unable to verbalize at the time. He got his first dose of the antibiotic (the one we thought he'd reacted to a few weeks ago when he ended up with fifth disease) last night, and we assumed everything would be fine.

Even before he took the medicine, though, we noticed that he was acting funny.  After school, he was very cranky, but he mostly seemed to be tired and sugared out. They'd had an "Easter Sundae" party with ice cream and apple juice, and he usually reacts pretty strongly especially to apple juice.

Anyway, I left for choir right after dinner, and Sarah had trouble getting him to bed, which is rare. He was breathing a little funny, he couldn't get comfortable, he wasn't happy with Sarah out of the room, he couldn't calm down when she lay down on the floor next to his crib. But eventually he collapsed and fell asleep after about an hour.

Come 12:30 am, we got woken up by Nicholas really struggling with his breath. Like an awful lot, sounding like he's wheezing or gasping, something. He was burning up, so we considered taking his temperature. But then Sarah noticed that his face was very puffy and red. Off to the ER, pronto.

I'll keep this part short, largely because most of the four hours we were at the hospital was just waiting around. The ER doctor thought it was an allergy, so gave him medicine for that, but the nurse also took a throat swab to check for strep (without telling us why, though it turned out that the doctor was suspicious about whether the rash was actually an allergy).

Good move, because it came back positive. So the end result is that Nicholas definitely has strep, and actually needs antibiotics. The rash, which most resembled a really bad sunburn all over his body, is likely scarlet fever, which strep causes.

And so Nicholas continues his tour of diseases that no one hears about anymore.

But since some of his symptoms were more consistent with an allergic reaction than scarlet fever, we're assuming he's allergic to the other antibiotic, so that's a no go from now on. And today was pretty difficult, since none of us slept (and by the way both Sarah and I have a cold, on top of everything else). Nicholas is feeling much better, and was like himself for periods throughout the day. But he was also cranky and irritable, an effect of both being sick and being exhausted.

In any event, we're very glad it's nothing more serious than it is, but we're all getting a little weary of the toddler illnesses for this season.