Friday, September 25, 2009

What a 2 Weeks!



The past 2 weeks have seemed like a comedy of errors. So, we thought Taylor came through her surgery without any major issues. For the most part, she did. The pain medicine turned her from Princess Jekyll to Princess Hyde, but that was manageable. I'm not really sure why she reacted to the medicine this time as Taylor has had a lot of surgeries and painful procedures and been on strong narcotics before and not had any issues.


Then, we thought she was coming down with a cold this past weekend, so I took her to Urgent Care. They decided, after a chest x-ray, that she had a partially collapsed lung (not serious enough for chest tubes thank goodness) and the beginnings of bronchitis. We treated those symptoms with antibiotics. She seemed good to go with no fever for over 24 hours so I decided to let her go to school on Wednesday since it was early release anyway.


She seemed a little tired when she came home from school but nothing major. She did go to bed and actually fall asleep earlier than she usually does. Normally, I put her to bed, which means I give her snack and put her in her room where she will play until she falls asleep somewhere between 9 and 10:30pm. She is good about staying in her room unless she needs to use the restroom.


I always fall asleep on the couch while my better half works on computers until about 1 am or so at which time he'll wake me up and we go to bed. We happen to run a very successful computer repair business out of or home. He is very well known in our little town. Paul wasn't feeling well either so he had gone to bed at 10:30 so I just stayed on the couch. At about 2:30am, I woke up to the sound of Taylor coughing so bad I expected to see a lung when I went in her room.


I took her temperature and it was 102.4. Thursday morning, I called the family doctor and he saw her at 4. I was so not ready for a diagnosis of Swine Flu. I mean…really? Apparently, just as a precaution, when we were in Urgent Care Sunday, they had the IV nurse take a blood sample from her port and they also did a throat swab. I thought they were checking for Strep or something.


However, unbeknownst to me, they also were testing for the H1N1 virus. I'm guessing it was just an oversight that they didn't tell me because the doctors in the Urgent Care know Taylor very well and they are good with her and they always tell me what they are doing.


Her family doctor looked at the test results and told us about the Swine Flu. Apparently now, Taylor is the first one in the high school to have the swine flu so she is the wonderful reason for hundreds of those "a case of H1N1 virus has been diagnosed in the school so…" letters going out to all the parents. Yes, my child is special.


This flu is really kicking her butt. She was up most of the night either coughing or being really whiney because of body aches. It's really hard to know what hurts because she can't tell me. I just have to know the difference between a "pain" noise and a "I'm crabby leave me alone" noise.


She is spending most of the day in her room watching TV and reading her car magazines. She comes occasionally to throw her tub toys over the shower curtain and into the tub, then goes right back to her bed. I'll have to do a post on her obsession with throwing plastic toys into an empty bathtub.


Wow…this post ended up longer than I thought. I think I'm going to put my head on my desk ignore customers at the door…well, not really but it sounds good.




6 comments:

HappilyFlawed said...

sick kids suck no matter who they are! and sick partners suck too!

Hopefully everything gets back to normal soon, god i feel like ive been saying that a lot lately.

My name is Sarah said...

Oh no. not the swine flu. I hope you feel better.

huter12 said...

Hi Dawn - hope you are hanging in there. I "met" you at OHIH. Been thinking about you and your daughter today. You asked if I have a blog - no I don't. I use the internet mostly for news, information and research. I'm fairly new to the blogging world. I've skimmed through your blog and can really relate to everything you said. My daughter is 38 and has Down's Syndrome; she has always lived with me. Sounds like she and your daughter are a lot alike. I know you must be very worried right now because of the swine flu. My daughter also has difficulty with speech and I know how scary and frustrating it can be when your child can't tell you exactly how they're feeling. I plan on reading through your posts when I have time. Having an older disabled child (especially one my daughter's age) can make you feel out of the loop, so to speak. So much support is geared to the younger ones; sometimes it feels like she and her peers have been forgotten. (I posted here instead of at OHIH because I'm a private person and not used to talking in a public forum.) Hope Taylor feels better soon.

Jennifer said...

Poor Taylor. She's been through the wringer the past few weeks. Praying for a fast recovery, and no more surprises for a while!

Tina said...

Dawn:

I hope Taylor is feeling better....

~Hugs

Heather said...

poor taylor. hope she's on the mend.