Asher

I had taken Asher to the doctor on Friday morning because he had started running a fever Wednesday afternoon, and it hadn't gone away. He was diagnosed with strep and put on Amoxicillan. He wasn't running a fever Saturday morning, so we went ahead with our plans to go to Jon's parents' house. By Saturday night, his fever was up to 103.6. We treated the fever, and waited until Sunday morning. He was still running fever, so I called the medical exchange. They said if he is still running fever 48 hours after beginning the anti-biotic, he needed to be seen. So, after he woke up from his afternoon nap with a fever, we started figuring out where to take him. Hopefully I picked a place that is ok with our insurance--of course there is no one to talk to on the weekend.
I took him to the ER of a hospital with children's facilities. I got there a little after 4. They triaged him, and his temp was 104.2. They gave him Motrin to bring it down, which it did--within 1/2 hour it was 101 or something close to that. I had been medicating his fever, but in the chaos of getting to the hospital, I hadn't given him anything to keep it down. It made me realize that I am capable of telling fairly accurately by feeling him that he is running a fever, but I need to actually take it to accurately gauge how high it is.
At 5:30, they took me back to a room. The nurse who took me back said that they were really busy, and that she didn't know how long it would be before a doctor was in to see me. Then she disappeared. At 6:30, I called the nurses station and asked them to make sure I was still in queue to be seen. About 10 minutes later the doctor came in. I explained the situation. She looked in his throat, said it was still red, but that they don't retest a confirmed diagnosis. She said to keep him on the Amoxicillan, but to add another anti-biotic, Azithromycin (by the way, I am typing these medicines from memory, so the likelihood that I am misspelling them is pretty high!) So we filled that, and got him started on it. The ER doc said to take him to our pediatrician in 2 days.
So, yesterday morning, I made an appointment for 4:10 PM--as close as I could get to 48 hours without waiting until Wednesday morning. Asher was still running 103.8 at one point, so I definitely didn't want to wait to take him in. The doctor we saw is not our PCP, but another good doc in the practice. He ran some blood work and did a mono test. The blood work came back fine, and the mono was negative. The lady who took the blood work thought Asher was dehydrated to a certain degree because she had trouble getting the blood to flow from the finger prick. The doctor said that Asher could have a virus that is causing the fever, but since he had the positive strep test, we would treat it as a strep that is resistant to Amoxicillan. He said that Azithromycin isn't all that effective against strep. So he took Asher off the 2 anti-biotics, and put him on a new one--Omnicef.
He has had 3 doses of Omnicef now. I gave him Motrin during the night last night around 3:30, but didn't have to medicate him again until he woke up from his afternoon nap. His fever was only 101.9 after all that time, which is significantly better than it has been in a week. It hasn't gone back up yet, so I am hopeful that whatever his little body is fighting is finally on the defensive. As a side note, I think he has picked up the cough that the other 3 of us had, but it doesn't seem to be too bad. Asher's mother's day out program is on its third week, and he hasn't been yet! We were out of town the first week, and he has been sick the other times.
So, I am still keeping a close eye on him, but I am tentatively saying he is on the mend.