Many are the plans… Part II, Heading South.

Great news about my husband’s condition…. check.

AN4's croup and fever, on the mend…check.

JD1’s Monday morning follow-up appointment revealed a new ear infection.  Amoxicillin here we come!  His fever was still hanging on but the pediatrician assured me it should be getting better by Wednesday.  Awesome.

JB6 had started getting a fever but she was feeling alright and determined NOT to be the reason we prolong our wait to travel to Grandma’s.

Tuesday 

We spent packing.  The girls had been waiting anxiously for weeks, no months, to leave for Grandma’s in PA!  We had camping planned, family cabin weekend, visits with friends, hotel reservations, oh so many reasons to be excited!

My husband and I were pretty excited too.  We had been saving to purchase a new-to-us suburban and had finally found just the right one from a dealer-friend in PA.  It was setting waiting for us in Manheim, PA.

We picked up a (much smaller than our mini-van) rental car Tuesday night and packed it up for our 4am Wednesday morning departure.  JB6's temp was still up but we figured a day of resting in the car wouldn’t hurt, fortunately we were right.  By the end of Wednesday, she had kicked her bug and was back to normal.

Now the rental car had to be back to the Lancaster Airport by 5:00pm on Wednesday.  My husband is a detail-oriented man.  He had picked up our rental at precisely the right time to be able to get our full 24 hour rental in before the rental place closed Wednesday afternoon.  He’s so funny.

Wednesday

Up and at em at 4:00am, heading south.  All was going fairly well, then somewhere around Scranton, PA JD1 seemed to be getting a little sluggish.  We stopped and checked his temp and sure enough it was going up again.  So of course, I cried and unrealistically asked my husband to turn the car around and take us home.  In his gentle wisdom he reminded me that a 12 hour drive home was probably not what was best for JD and that our destination was on a couple hours away.  So, on we went.

I cry a lot lately.

JD became VERY wheezy.  Did you catch that I am nurse?  This should be a helpful thing but really, its not at times like these.  Because I start comparing his symptoms to all the worse case scenarios that I can think of.  Before I know it, I have worked myself into an illogical frenzy. 

We kept pushing on for our destination.  I kept crying and praying but, definitely crying.

We reached the dealer’s garage and for a quick moment, I was just super excited because the suburban is really all that I hoped it would be.  Its black, its leather, it has a DVD player!  Did I care that it is not brand new?  No!  Because we had saved up for this day and we were excited!

But JD continued to wheeze and the time was nearing 4:30 and we still had the rental car to return.  I started moving our luggage from the itty bitty rental car to our comparatively big beast of a vehicle as fast as I could while my husband signed paperwork.  We flew through Lancaster to the airport where we returned the rental at 4:50.  From there we raced to a local ER.

Another ER, another day.

There I met the sweetest nurse, the kindest respiratory therapist and a doctor with the personality of a hermit. As my son is audibly wheezing, he requests that I “lay him flat on the stretcher,” so that he can listen to his lungs.  I suggested that it might work better if I just held him, but no, he wanted him to lay down.  Really? have you ever assessed a one year old before?  Seriously, do you really think that forcing him down on a bed surrounded by strangers is going to calm him enough to hear his lungs?  Oh please.  Of course JD screamed, a lot. 

“Well, his lungs are clear, I can’t hear a thing, no wheezes, I think he’s alright” says the hermit. 

Most people would say that I tend to be a compliant individual but THIS was too much.  Did I mention that JD's O2 sat was bouncing between 89 and 94%?  Hello!  I must have shot him a look that the hermit did not expect because his reaction was the first ounce of personality that he had demonstrated since we arrived in the ER and it seemed to only be spurred on by his offended pride. 

“I see you don’t agree with me?” he sneered.

So, I answered him. “Well, no, I don't.  I have been traveling with this child in a car all the way from Maine.  I have been listening to his breathing pattern and it has changed.  For the last 2 hours he has been wheezing and spiking fevers again.  This child had a febrile seizure just 5 days ago (I know that doesn’t win parenting points but that wasn’t the issue here) and he has a current ear infection.  I can hear him wheezing as he sits here now.  If you can’t hear that, then no, I do not agree with you.” 

I figured, what's he going to do, spit in my drink?  They never offered us one anyway…

JD was then given a breathing treatment which did wonders, go figure.  His x-ray showed no pneumonia but thankfully he was on Amoxicillin anyway, which worked out well.  Then interestingly enough, his RSV test came back positive.  Big Sigh.

After some very unhelpful discharge instructions (and even more crying on my part) we moved on.  Our hotel plans and day trip plans for Lancaster were cancelled and instead we drove an additional 2 hours that night to get straight to Grandma’s house.  But a change of plans was pretty much par for the course on this trip and really, we were just thrilled to have arrived safely.

And from there, things were bound to get better.



The Rental Car at a Pit-Stop



Our New-to-Us Suburban