For those that don't want all of the details the following blog post can be summed up like this... Mary, Lydia, and I got sick, then Robert and I got sick but I was worse, then Mary got sick, then Mary got sick again, then Lydia got sick and is just now getting better, and that has been our life for the past 2 months :) Now details...
Well, within a couple of days of getting home from Utah we started in with our rush of illnesses. Strike that, before going on the trip right around Lydia's birthday Lydia, Mary, and I each had a bad battle with allergies which turned into colds and/or sinus infections. No fun!! We all finally got over that within days of going on the trip. Then 2 days after getting home from the trip symptoms from a bad food poisoning bacteria plagued a lot of the family that had gone to the reunion. Robert ended up only getting the "Hershey Squirts" for a day or 2 and then it was done. Me on the other hand, since I had just gotten over a cold, my immune system was compromised so it was able to attack me harder and I ended up in the hospital with a severely inflamed intestine. No fun!! I felt like my insides were going to explode! With a hefty batch of antibiotics, a lot of IV fluids, and $35,000 worth of hospital bills later I was on my way.
Once I got home, and after about a week of recovery Mary started acting sick. Mainly just a low grade fever (right at or lower than 100`). She'd been teething so I thought it was that, but then one morning after a couple days of the low grade fever she started throwing up blood and her fever majorly spiked. I took her straight to the doctor. She was still pretty alert and a little fussy, but that was it. So when they took her temperature they weren't at all expecting to see the number they did... 106.8`!!! Normally with a fever that high a kid will basically be comatose or having constant seizures, so it really caught them off guard. I've never seen medical staff panic the way they did. They started shouting at me to take all of her clothes off while they grabbed some wet cold rags and ice packs to cover her with. They gave her a big dose of Tylenol and later an additional dose of Ibuprofen, while I fed her as much of a Pedialyte Popsicle as she could stand.
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| Sweet sick baby waiting for her test results. |
Several blood tests, a catheter for a urine sample, an x-ray of her chest, and more tests later we figured out that she had a bad kidney infection which a trace of it had spread to her blood stream (I still don't know how that works but that's what they said). She had a few days that we would have to take her in to get a shot of a heavy duty antibiotic in her leg and then followed that up with a week of oral antibiotics. Follow up tests and an ultrasound showed that there is nothing anatomically wrong with her kidneys, so it was just a bad luck infection that she got from who knows where. But since she has had one it makes her more likely to have more, so we were told that if she ever has a fever that has no other obvious symptoms (bad cough, rash, etc.) that we can see for more than 48 hours we should bring her in to get her urine tested.
Two weeks later we went swimming with some friends whose kids started showing symptoms that night of the Hand, Foot, and Mouth virus. We called the doctor to see what we should be on the look out for. She said that HFM is going around like crazy right now in Santa Cruz, so even if they don't get it from our friends there's a high chance they would pick it up from somewhere else soon. Anyway, we were told that the incubation period was 3-6 days so 7 days later (which brings us to last Saturday) when no symptoms showed up we thought we were in the clear and dropped the girls off with some friends (the same friends who had HFM before) and went to the temple.
It was the first time we had done a session at the Oakland Temple together since we moved here and it was fabulous!! But on the way home I got a text from our friends saying that Mary had felt warm so they took her temp and it was 102`. Awesome right? We figured it must just be HFM, then noticed she was cutting 5 more teeth at once and thought maybe it was that, but after 2 days and the fever not improving and no sores or anything appearing like you would expect with HFM, we followed Doctor's orders and brought her in to get her urine tested. That came up clear, but we found out that both ears were infected. So another prescription for another round of antibiotics. She started feeling better after a day or 2 and we'll be finishing those off the middle of next week. So we had still dodged the Hand, Foot, and Mouth bullet until 3 days ago Lydia started having a fever and then the sores showed up Thursday afternoon. Since Lydia has it Mary will most likely get it too which is just lovely, so even with Lydia already acting like she is feeling a lot better I don't think we are quite out of the woods yet.
So there you have it. Our practically 2 months straight of sickness. As you can imagine, it has been quite lovely. Our ward has been AWESOME!!! Helping out with dinners, babysitting, even doing our dishes while I was in the hospital. Basically, our ward rocks!!!
In other news, since we have spent a good portion of time staying inside either being sick or with the sick kiddos, we have gotten a lot of Mario Kart Wii time in. I'm practically unstoppable now! I can even dodge blue shells, (yes it is possible), and here is a picture of me getting my first 3 star rank which I thought was virtually unattainable.
So yeah, you wish you were as cool as me!!!
