Run Fox Run

Several of Run Fox Run’s regular readers (!) looked over the last photo album and asked the question, “Where’s Cleo?”  The answer is that she was feeling a bit under the weather during many of the featured activities.  Since Labor Day, she’s had more days feeling down than up — though she did have some up days, and Grandma Lynn took a few pictures to prove it.  In 2 weeks she visited her pediatrician 3 times and received 3 different diagnoses for what was causing her symptoms and general malaise.  And last Tuesday, her worried Mom had started to worry enough that she took her feverish, shaking daughter to the ER.

Here’s what I thought would happen: (1) the doctors would be a bit skeptical, and say, Lady, this kid’s fine.  Take her home and don’t be stingy with the Motrin.  Or, possibly, (2) they would administer a bit of medicine themselves, and send us home after a few hours.  At the ER I always suspect there’s a standard 3 hours per patient and they make that work more often than not.  Either way, I figured they’d chalk me up as one more paranoid, overprotective mom.

Gentle readers, I was wrong.  Cleo endured a variety of tests — blood work, urinalysis (which, if you’re 17 months old and not so much with the peeing in cups, involves a Kubrickian catheterization), a chest X-ray — and late Tuesday evening the ER doc and her pediatrician decided that she’d have to stay overnight.  She got a mighty antibiotic, and IV fluids, but her fever kept spiking.  It should be noted that I did not feel especially vindicated for having brought her to the ER.  The professionals decided that she had a bacterial infection on top of a virus, and she hadn’t been able to fight it without help.  We stayed three nights before at last, she went 24 hours without a fever, and started to want to eat and play again.  By our last day she looked like this:

The pediatric wing was quite nice — Cleo and I had a room to share, and down the hall was an amazingly well-stocked playroom with a patio to play on.  Cleo made friends with an energetic boy named Henry who liked trains.  She charmed all the nurses and techs as we walked the hallways with her IV pole.  In our absence, Leda had a delightful time with Daddy, Jack, Charlotte, Erica, and other friends. All the same, we’re both quite glad to be home.