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Maddie has been battling the flu for over a week now. Two weeks ago, she had a fever and was cranky all day, so we took her into the doctor. They checked a few things and ran some tests and didn’t find anything of note. The fever went away the next day, so we never were sure what was wrong with her.

A week ago, exactly one week from her original fever, she had another fever. Neither fever was high, but since she just had one a week ago, we wanted to take her to the doctor just in case. This time she had a bit of a sore throat, so we were happy to have some sort of explanation. That night, her fever was 103.5, so we headed back to the doctor on Saturday. They tested her for the flu, and the test came back negative. They did a few more checks, and everything else seemed to be ok. Then that night she spiked a fever of 105.6. We were really scared and worried about her! We nearly took her to the ER but heard back from the advice nurse just as we were walking out the door. The nurse advised us on how to get Maddie’s fever down, and urged us to go to the ER if we were unable to reduce the fever or if the fever reached 105 again later in the night. Either way, we should go to an urgent care on Sunday.

So, we went back to the Urgent Care where her fever was around 105 in the middle of the day. The doctor told us that we shouldn’t be concerned about high fevers, although this Mommy is still going to be concerned about fevers above 105 no matter what! Her throat looked awful. The doctor said that he has never seen strep in a baby her age, but he tested for it just to be sure. The quick test came back negative, and the full test did as well a few days later.

Her fever was high again that night. She seemed to be quite uncomfortable, especially at night. Her fever went down for half a day, and then it started going up again, so we made an appointment with her pediatrician on Tuesday. They did a blood test which came back normal and did all the usual checks. At this point, I thought I was getting the same thing as I was feeling pretty awful. Wednesday, I felt miraculously better and Maddie had been fever free for 24 hours, so we attempted to go to work and daycare. I got a call from daycare about an hour later saying that she had been pretty much inconsolable all day. I wasn’t surprised as she had been upset during the night and that morning, but we thought that she wasn’t contagious and that a change of scenery might be what she needed.

We called the advice nurse and were waiting to hear back from her after consulting with the doctor. In the meanwhile, I made an appointment just in case we needed it…and then decided to cancel the appointment. The advice nurse called back and made us an appointment and wanted to see us afterall. This time, I asked if it was possible that they took a flu test too early and got a false negative. They did say it was possible, but that treatment wouldn’t be much different if she was diagnosed with the flu. I pushed to have the test done, anyway, because we would at least have a diagnosis! They did the test, and she tested positive for the flu. He advised us to keep her home for a few more days as she’s likely still contagious.

She shows signs of improvement parts of the day, but still has very rough nights and none of us are sleeping well. I hope that she is better soon!

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Posted by kerry on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 9:12am.
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