A (w)Retched Trip to the Doctor

Last Friday I sent all the kids to school then did a little happy dance because they were all healthy! Yippee! Yahoo! No more fevers!

My happiness was short-lived. Felisa woke up Saturday morning with a fever. I shake my fist in the air and yell, a la Scarlett O'Hara. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!?? Sunday morning dawned with Bella's fever returning to join Felisa's. We are going on two months of sick kids. I'm about to lose it!

There is a supposed snow and ice storm brewing for tonight through Wednesday so I figured maybe now would be a good time to head to the doctor. I'd like to rule out any ear infections or anything medicine can fix. We've tried the just-rest-and-give-it-time method but it's not working as well as I would like. At 7:20 when I called for an appointment, the lady told me there was only one appointment available today (because it's Monday and because everyone else is also probably trying to avoid the storm as well) and it's at 8:00. Hmm. Two of the kids are still sleeping but I think we can make it. We have to at least try, right? I loaded up the girls (and Ryan - he's not sick at the moment but it's too early for school so we might as well bring him along for the ride.) and headed to the doctor's office. Doc said that she thinks Bella just has another virus on top of the one from last week. She did order a complete workup (xray, blood, urinalysis) to be sure nothing else was going on since the fever has been around for 10 days or so now. Possibilities include walking pneumonia and strep. We were in the lab waiting room for all of 10 minutes before Felisa started coughing so much she threw up all over me (and herself). Since I was covered in ick and there were about 20 people in the lab also waiting (and ahead of us in line) I decided to give up and opt for the hibernation plan instead and hope that the girls improve. If they don’t then maybe we’ll try again in a couple days (after the big snow storm that most likely won’t happen). If things go bad, we have a four-wheel drive vehicle and can head for the ER.

After the waiting room disaster, I changed Felisa (clean clothes for kids in the car, unfortunately none for me!) then went to Whole Foods (the new one) to pick up some more gummy Echinacea/zinc/vit.c bears to boost our beaten and bruised immune systems. And a few treats for me to soothe the ravaged mommy. Oh and a few veggies, milk, and TP just for good measure and to be ready for the big storm (you know, the one that will turn out to be all hype and no substance like they usually are around here)! That is a very nice, fancy whole foods by the way – in case you all needed to know that. Seem to have more items than ours. And more service areas for already-done foods. I even saw an aisle labeled as Gluten-Free (though we didn’t explore since I was trying to sort-of hurry. Of course being in a hurry didn’t stop me from browsing the wine section and debate whether or not to spend $20 on a bottle of ice wine. I decided not to, a choice I may be regretting by tomorrow!).

Then we dropped Ryan off at school for 3 hours (Monday short day). I wouldn’t have bothered taking him but we might be off or delayed later this week (yeah right) so I went ahead and sent him to school just in case. If we’re really lucky, maybe he’ll bring home some new germs we don’t have yet. I’m starting a collection…