One Tough Trooper

A rough morning for my little guy yesterday. Benjamin woke up in the middle of the night crying hard and really worked up. He occasionally does that with a bad dream, so we didn't think too much of it, though it did seem to take a lot longer to settle him down. We put him in bed with us and when he got back to sleep, he still was breathing very shallow.

An hour or two later, he woke up like that again. Being that he was in the same room as his (at least temporarily) sleeping sister, I hustled him out to the den and tried to settle him down, to no avail. We wound up laying on the couch, watching a Thomas DVD about three times and both of us dozing off and on.

We finally got him back to sleep around six or so, so we called and left a message at the doctor, figuring something was wrong with him. We actually made contact with them after their call back pretty quickly and got an 8:45 appointment. I took a quick shower, threw on clothes, then tried to just take him from bed to the car. "Get dressed," he said. So I got him dressed quickly, then put on his shoes like he wanted. Turned out to be a good thing, as long as we were there.

We sat in the outer waiting room until around 9:20 or so. I was afraid that was going to be a disaster, but he must have been improving somewhat, because he just sat with me and watched the TV shows they had going. No fussing, nothing like that.

We got called back, got him weighed (32 pounds, which I think means he's lost a couple), and then had to wait for the doctor. He seems to know that those rooms are not good, as he reacted negatively both times we went back there.

Finally, Dr. Pilkington comes in. Checks his ears and stuff, notices nothing amiss. Took a little more work to see into his mouth--Benjamin's never cared for that part--but the throat looked fine as well. The doctor didn't think it was anything terribly severe, but wanted to run tests to make sure it wasn't tick fever or anything like that. Unfortunately, that meant blood work and X-rays.

They take us over to the lab, and we wait there for a while. It really didn't take too long before they called his name. The nurse taking the blood had a grandchild that lived with her that was basically Benjamin's age, which made it somewhat difficult for her to do the procedure. However, it didn't faze Benjamin. He didn't know what was coming, but all he did was flinch when they stuck him, no crying or anything. They got the blood, then gave him two Curious George stickers (one we put on his shirt, one we kept for later) and a sucker and sent us off to X-ray.

The X-ray wait was non-existent; we got right in there. That didn't go as well, as there was a lot of crying going on. Still, he did what they told him to without any resistance, just some tears. I was able to hold his hand and help him out, but it still wasn't a lot of fun.

Back to the outer waiting room for a while, which was OK with him. He got to see one of his favorite shows, WonderPets. It was the first time I'd seen it and it was amazing how, well, low quality the visuals were (if you've seen JibJab, it was kinda like that) He really likes it, though, which is the key.

Called us to the examination room again, which stiffened Benjamin up. Waited a bit, then Pilkington returned. We looked at the X-rays (I told Benjamin they were pictures of his insides, which he thought was kinda neat, I think) and the first two looked fine. The third, though, showed that the definition you'd expect around his heart wasn't there. That indicated likely bronchitis or possible beginnings of pneumonia. The blood work had shown that his white blood cell count was elevated and the vast majority of those cells were bacteria-fighting. So, of course, we wanted to treat that.

Unfortunately (again) , that required a shot. Benjamin cried about that when it happened as well, but he recovered pretty quickly. He got to pick out another sucker, so that helped some.

The shot seems to have made a real difference. He went home and took a 2+ hour nap and has been really fine ever since. My parents sent him a balloon bouquet and some M&Ms, which he really liked as well. He starts taking an oral antibiotic today for ten days to make sure that everything gets cleared up. We've just got to take care today and tomorrow to monitor Sarah and make sure she doesn't get it.

I was very impressed and proud of him yesterday. To have to deal with all of that in one morning and not have it really make him clingy or whiny or anything of that sort was pretty mature for a not-yet-three year old, in my book!