Little Bear is sick ... Again ... It's been on average every 2 weeks for the last 5-6 months.
This morning we go for blood tests. We are visiting Grannysaurus straight after & then Aunty McTavish & the clan this afternoon to try and help us (both) forget about the blood tests.
Please pray for answers. Little Bear gets so sick each time it's heartbreaking to watch and not be able to do anything.
OK, here's the update on Little Bear.
After an absolutely woeful night, I took her to the doctors today. She has a chest infection & has 2 lots of antibiotics (+ repeats) to be taken at the same time. That doesn't explain why the fevers keep recurring.
Doctor has said it could be a urinary tract infection & we had to get a wee sample. Easier said than done on a 2 year old who is still in nappies.
Finally got it at 7pm tonight. Path Lab closes at 6. Guess what I'll be doing first thing in the morning.
Have another appointment in a week. She will need seperate antibiotics again if it is a UTI. If it isn't, then the next step is blood tests.
In the meantime, I really hope that tonight I get SOME sleep.
Poor Little Bear is sick again.
Every 2-3 weeks since the start of June she has come down with a high fever that lasts 3 days. Initially Panadol seemed to keep it under control, but each time she catches it again it is a little bit worse. Last night Panadol wasn't doing much at all. She had a temperature of 39 an hour after taking Panadol.
A month ago she had this & it turned into a chest infection. 2 weeks later, just as she took the last dose of antibiotics, she came down with the fever again but it only lasted a day (I guess because of the antibiotics). This time (2 weeks later again) she is starting to sound very chesty so I am hoping it doesn't go to her chest again.
When she gets really high temperatures, she throws up. We were able to prevent this by setting our alarm to go off every 4 hours in the night to give her the next dose of Panadol. Now that the Panadol isn't working as well, we were still up all last night cleaning up vomit & consoling Little Bear.
Whatever she has doesn't seem to be contagious because not one time that she's been sick has anyone else seemed to catch it from her.
I feel so frustrated & helpless. We've been to the doctor countless times, but because it's just been a virus, they haven't been able to do anything (except when she caught the chest infection). I will probably take her again tomorrow but I am hoping that they will order some tests to see if there is something else going on. I don't want them to poke my baby with needles, but I don't want to see my baby so sick either.
Yesterday Little Bear was very sick.
She was fine at kindy, then at about 7ish she threw up. As she had been coughing a fair bit before hand, I put it down to that & still let her have Macca's chippies for dinner. She didn't have a temperature, seemed fine & as my kids throw up when they choke (we try not to let that happen too often), you can see why I wasn't too worried.
She ate about 2 chippies & mostly just sucked the sweet & sour sauce off them & kept double dunking (I was sharing the sauce with her).
After that, she began to develop a temperature & then it was all on until 1am. I lost count of how many times she threw up, but it seemed like every 20 minutes or so. Due to a number of tummy bugs in our family recently, I am becoming fairly adept at handling them efficiently. We put a clean set of sheets under her current set of sheets, then folded up a bunny rug to lie under her head. Several bunny rugs later & I didn't even need to strip the bed down to the clean sheets (however once more would have been the kicker).
This morning, she still wasn't well & I was completely knackered, so we stayed home together. After taking Cheetah to school, she seemed to be OK so we came home & had brekky. That stayed down so we went bed shopping. As she was in her pram & dosed up on Panadol it wasn't too difficult.
It took 4 hours to find a bed, a reasonably priced inner spring mattress & pillows, quilts, sheets, mattress protectors etc. (That doesn't count the hours on the internet searching, the numerous visits to various bedding shops over the last few weeks & time poring over catalogues).
I can't believe I spent as much on the linen as I did on the bed (after much shopping around too I might add)!
The mattress we have to pick up tomorrow, we don't have that yet, but we borrowed Cheetahs mattress tonight so she could still get to sleep on her new bed.
I think she is pretty pleased with her new bed!
Let's hope it gets us all a better nights sleep than last night. Seems to be working well so far ;-)
For the travel update I know you are all sitting on the edge of your seats for...
We left Brisbane on Friday morning, after missing out on seeing my friend who I was going to meet up with there.
I was absolutely devastated when she sent me a message saying she wouldn't be able to make it because something urgent had come up at the very last minute. I was also a little bit relieved, because by this point my stomach was causing me absolute agony (due to constant coughing, combined with no sleep for over 36 hours & sitting in an uncomfortable commodore passenger seat). Brisbane city is lots of hills & I wasn't looking forward to trying to juggle both kids, the pram & my stomach ache to make that visit (as I would be walking to meet her, not driving).
Anyway, this also meant we were able to leave a bit earlier that we had previously anticipated & took off at once for Newcastle via Port Macquarie.
The drive to Port Macquarie was a bit taxing, given that Little Bear was starting to despise the car seat (which had been laundered I might add). However we got there about 6pm (ish). After spending a lot of time coughing while glued to a not so comfortable car seat, my stomach was killing me (worse than it had been in Brisbane). The next morning I was starting to wonder whether it wouldn't be more prudent to book a second night in Port Macquarie to avoid driving that day, but after a couple of hours of being awake it settled a bit & I was able to travel (although it was anything but comfortable).
Our motel in PM was OK & was right on the beach - you could see Flynn's Beach (I think that's what it's called) from the motel & it was quite beautiful, but we only caught a glimpse of it as we left, because we arrived after dark & left first thing in the morning.
We got to Newcastle about 1pm the day we left PM. Nanna & Big Pop were excited to see the grandkids & for the next few days I didn't do much other than laundry & try to relax as much as possible as I was really crook by this point.
This means that so far we have very little photo's of our journey as it was just too much for me. We also had to cancel our Albury leg of our journey to visit DH's brother because I was still too sick to travel when we were meant to be leaving, but we did get to add another day onto our Canberral leg which worked out well as we had crammed a fair bit into that & it allowed us to have a bit of breathing time while we were there.
We took plenty of photo's in Canberra, but Little Bear has been a bit camera shy. I will post these when I get home. We took a few more when we returned from Canberra to Newcastle & now that we are at Surfer's Paradise, I expect that we will take a lot of photo's when we visit Seaworld tomorrow.
Poor Little Bear has been sick, and today I finally took her to the doctors. Turns out she has bronchitis.
Because she had her needles a week ago, when she developed a fever six days later, we figured it was from the MMR needle which gave her brother Cheetah a fever & rash about 5 days after the needle (which is quite common). When she still has the fever 5 days later & her runny nose (which we put down to teething because she always gets snuffly when teething) had begun to give her quite a chesty cough, I finally caved & took her to the doctors. The only reason I took her was because I was worried she might have an ear infection (last time she had one, I didn't realise for several days because she only had a slight fever & general illness, nothing like ear pulling, inability to sleep, etc that indicates ear infection). Doc says her ears are fine, but she has Bronchitis so back on Antibiotics she goes.
This is the 5th time since she turned one that she has been sick (actually the 4th because the first time was a week before her birthday). Her chest rattles when she breathes & she constantly has snot streaming out her nose. I feel so badly for her. It was actually quite funny this afternoon though, because we were downstairs with no tissues, the two streams of snot made it past her mouth but didn't break & when she breathed out they made bubbles. She thought it was great. Loving mother that I am, I should have found something to wipe it up, but she was having fun & whenever I try to wipe her nose you would think that I was actually trying to rip out her nostril hairs individually the racket she makes (although that's nothing compared to the terrified wail she let out at the doctors when he tried to look down her throat).
At the doctors, Little Bear was exploring (the doctor has these neat steps that you use to get up on the 'bed'. There are two steps & Little Bear can climb up on them, but the bed is too high for her to climb onto. She loves to just climb up & down those steps until the doctor comes in). Unfortunately for the poor doctor (who is about 6 ft tall with a beard - none of the men in Little Bear's life have beards, other than the doctor), he walked in while Little Bear was not safe & sound in mummy's arms & he took her a bit by surprise. The doctor is very, very good with her & tries ever so hard to make her happy before he tries to do anything like look at her ears or listen to her chest. Unfortunately today, she was too sick to recover from her fright & when the doctor tried to feel her glands & look down her throat (which he does last because the kids don't like that much), she let out a kind of wail that I am glad I rarely hear. She was terrified & heartbroken & just generally upset to start with & I found it hard to reassure her instead of going out in sympathy. (To give you some idea, she didn't cry like that when she got her needles).
Anyway, she survived & she is finally in bed & sound asleep (after a short intermission from the land of nod, during which time we had to prop her matress up with pillows & rub vicks over her clothes (as it's too strong to put directly on her & the Tixylix was too hard to find). She is now sleeping like a princess & breathing like one too.
On the plus side, Little Bear & I are going to spend a day to ourselves tomorrow. I don't have too much housework to do (as I did about 3 weeks of catch up in the weekend just gone), and we are just going to relax & take it as easy as we can.
Poor Little Bear is not well. She has a fever, a runny nose & has lost her voice. I think she has a sore throat but as she can't tell us it's hard to say.
I feel very badly for her, but she is so cute, listening to her babble away with her husky little voice. Because she is not feeling very well, she is much more clingy than usual and just wants to be picked up all the time. We get heaps more cuddles than usual which is great, but when you have to put her down, she looks up at you with those great big eyes and long eyelashes with the tears just sitting there but never actually falling, and she purses her lips in the cutest little way and just makes this sad cry with her husky voice which just absolutely breaks your heart.
She also had her second hair cut today. The hairdresser was great & she looks so much better without all the straggly bits hanging in her eyes. She wasn't rubbing her eyes as much this afternoon either so I think that might be why. The hairdresser also cut off her rat's tail. The long section of baby hair that hadn't fallen out. It doesn't really make her hair look that much shorter overall even though this section of hair was a good couple of inches longer than the rest. She definitely looks better with her pretty little hair cut.
Cheetah also got his hair cut. It was so long it was hanging in his eyes. Now it is almost a crew cut. He is happy with it and also looks much better now. School is back tomorrow, so he can look spiffy for his first day back. He says he doesn't want to go back, but I think he will be very glad to catch up with his friends again.
After getting hair cuts, it was time to go to the Doctors as I needed a medical certificate for Little Bear to take leave from work.
While we were at the doctors, we had to wait for a while in the doctor's room. There was a painting of Australian Animals on a wall so we killed time talking about the animals. Little Bear thought the crocodile was great because you can have fun going "SNAP" and clapping your hands together like the mouth of a crocodile. We also talked about the Kookaburra and made the noise the Kookaburra makes. Then she tried to copy, but I am not sure if she was trying to say Kookaburra or make the noise. (I think she was making the noise because she laughed every time I made it - apparently I am a very funny kookaburra).
