Leah's Mystery Ailment

So if you and I are friends on Facebook, you'll have seen all my posts about Leah's mystery disease. But if not, I'll bring everyone up to speed.

Last Friday, I noticed that Leah slept all day long. As in, I think she was awake for approximately 3 hours. Whenever we would move her at all, she would scream like she was in pain. She wasn't eating very much either.

Overnight, I noticed that she was getting really, really hot. Around 5AM, I took her temperature and it was 101 under her arm, or about 102 core temperature. I knew this was not good, so I called my mom for advice, who suggested Tylenol and a sponge bath. This worked for a while, but when she was still not eating, was still screaming when we touched her, and was still listless we decided to call the doctor.

The doctor on call returned our call almost immediately and suggested that we go to the ER. We had been mulling over that possibility all day. Leah, when healthy, has turned into an extremely active and extroverted baby, so this was totally unlike her. We took her to the ER, and I will give Mary Wash Hosp credit, they saw her immediately--it was so fast I thought they were calling me up for more paperwork and instead the nurse asked where the patient was. Having sat in the MWH waiting room for 5 hours with a broken leg, I was impressed.

So they did the standard tests, took her temp and pulse and oxygen rates, her temp was 100.7 when we got there. They did a urinalysis and drew blood (fun for mom on both accounts--why do they make moms hold down screaming babies for things like catheters and needle sticks?!) and then we got sent to a waiting room.

I had left in such a hurry, I hadn't even stopped to consider packing her diaper bag, and by now she was starting to get a little hungry. The nurse found us some formula and I called my sister and asked her to bring over some more. The doctor finally came back after a couple hours and told us that the urinalysis was clear and the blood didn't show anything alarming. His best guess was that it was some sort of virus that would eventually burn itself out with the fever. He told us to follow up with the pediatrician on Monday and that they would call us if anything serious turned up.

We went home and waited it out. She actually seemed to be improving on Sunday, as she was a bit more lively and eating better. She was not sleeping at night, however. I think the Friday sleep turned her days and nights all around, and so we were up ALL NIGHT. Monday morning, Michael called the doctor while I tried to doze for a while, and we got an appointment. I took Leah up and they gave her a check up and again, couldn't find anything. I took the initial lab results with me and Dr. Crane said nothing points to anything suspicious. Leah's fever was down, but she had developed a nasty rash. Dr. Crane said that oftentimes if a virus is to blame, at the end of its lifecycle it will manifest as a rash and that's how you know that the virus is dying off. She suggested more rest, feed her what she would tolerate, and continue the Tylenol for pain.

We got home and there was a call from MWH's lab asking me to call back, which made me very nervous. I called and spoke to the doctor, who said they had possibly found a bacteria in one of the cultures. It was a common bacteria and more likely than not, it was from her skin and had just found its way into the sample, but they would know more in 24 hours and would call back if it required medical attention.

To date, we haven't heard from them and it's been 48 hours since I spoke to them. This is hopefully good news. Today Leah is back to being her normal self, which is to say a total ray of sunshine. She's back to giggling, smiling, babbling, snuggling, etc. Her sleep is not totally normal--she woke up 3 times last night, but each time after a feeding or a pacifier, she went right back to sleep, unlike on Monday night when she was up from 11:30 to 4:30 and I wanted to kill myself (thanks again to Melissa for coming so Mom could have naptime!). We'll see what happens, we have a big week coming up with our travel next week, so I'm trying to take it easy now so that she'll be well rested for the journey to New York. I know she will be good medicine for her PopPop and seeing him doing better will be good medicine for me, so fingers crossed it all goes well.