On the upswing!

LO is feeling much better! Yay!

We had a few more ER visits since I last wrote though... Wed, Feb 3rd she got up around 3:30am and was hungry. She hadn't been drinking her juice and I was with-holding milk so that any fluid she did get was juice or water, just to keep her hydrated. So I gave her a 5oz bottle of juice-water mixture, and she downed it. We put her back to bed and when I got her up in the morning (about 3 hours later), there was still no wet diaper. So I decided to take her into ER. We didn't have to wait too long, about a half an hour. When we explained to Dr Best what was going on, he suggested I give her a milk bottle and wait for her to pee, because she didn't look dehydrated (she really didn't). You could tell he was really thinking about the situation and weighing the pros and cons. At this point, her diarrhea was pretty much water, and she poops through a few outfits a day. When he heard that, he was leaning towards blood work and IV hydration, but he wanted to see how this went. So after waiting forever for the bottle, I gave it to her and she downed it in a few seconds, and then went to sleep. She pretty much peed right away. He came in a bit later and spoke with me, letting me know that he thinks she'll be fine and that we can go home. I was dressed for work, and I said "But she shouldn't go to daycare yet" and he said "No, no she is not ready for daycare yet. You're dressed for work, do you need a doctor's note?" I thought about it and said "No, I don't think so..." He told me to bring her back if she wasn't peeing again. I really liked him. So I called work back (I had called earlier saying I'd be late for sure) and told them I wouldn't be in, and my boss was super nice about it and was asking how the baby was, and that if I didn't like what I was hearing, to demand to see the pediatrician, etc. etc. I asked her if I needed a dr's note and she almost seemed taken back by that, and said "No, but you will if you have to miss more than 3 days, but by then you'll have her back in if thats the case. Just worry about taking care of the baby!" So I was really happy about that. She asked me to call her later on in the day if I thought I wouldn't be in on thursday. That afternoon, I called her because LO still wasn't acting like herself. She had 8 or 9 diarrhea diapers, and no pee only diapers yet... So I called her and took thursday off. Thursday was much the same. No pee only diapers, and diarrhea so bad only water was coming out of her bum... it was terrible. At one point, she was pooping and I thought there was a rainstorm on tv.... eek.

Thursday night after hubby came home, we took her in again because she was not peeing. I didn't want to take her in this time, I felt that it was going to be a waste of time, that they were just going to say feed her liquids and wait 7-10 days, and this was only day 6. Well, triage said we were fast tracked because of her symptoms and age, but we still waited over 2 hours with a cranky baby... and a cranky as hell mommy.... we got in, and it was Dr Gelo. I know how he is behind the scenes, but patients love him, so I thought ok, maybe this is ok.... but we explained the situation, and he basically ignored the fact that she wasn't peeing, and focused on the diarrhea. Then he said "well, you've been in 3 times so far, so academically, I'd do blood work." He made it sound like I was not happy with what Dr. Best had said, and that is simply not true. He also at one point asked me what I wanted him to do. Um, you're the dr, you make the $, you figure it out. UGH!!!! Anyways, he did do blood work. LO cried a bit, but not too bad considering. Then after that, he wanted her to drink some Isomil (sp?) formula, because it wouldn't be so bad on the stomach, and wouldn't irritate the diarrhea like the milk from the day before did. Well, it smells exactly like cat food, so LO didn't like it at all. Oh yeah, she had peed somewhere in the middle of all of this too....After all of this, while we were waiting for the results, LO gets extremely tired, and its past her bedtime. When she gets this tired, she SCREAMS. Seriously, its bloody murder screaming.... So away she goes, and when she stops only to take a breath to gear up for the next scream, I can hear people saying "woah!" and "There's the baby!" and "Poor thing!" Eek! She will do this until she falls asleep, and she doesn't like to sleep anywhere but the crib, carseat, or play pen at daycare, so this can take a while. So she finally went to sleep. Dr Gelo comes back in and says that her white blood cells are slightly elevated, but that's normal in this case. He talked about sending a stool sample away to see for sure what it was, but he didn't seem like he really wanted to do that. He felt strongly that it was Norwalk Virus that she picked up. But he kept asking me if I wanted to have the sample.... Again, YOU ARE THE DOCTOR. UGH. So I asked him if it would make any difference in the diagnoses, and he said no, he said "But you'd know exactly what it was that was making her sick." I finally said well I'm good if you're good, and he said he was pretty sure he knew what it was. There are a few babies in the town that have it. FIne. So he said we're just waiting on the results for the electrolytes and creatinine. That's what I was more interested in. But he took off before the results came! The nurse came in and gave them to us about an hour later. LO was still asleep and she told us we could go, everything was good. YAY!!! She said dr gelo would call in the morning. Yeah right.

So Friday, her diarrhea went WAY down and by nighttime, she was feeling much better. She only had 1 or 2 diarrheas that day, and they were thicker than the water she was pooping out the day before, so she was feeling much better. Sat and sunday she was cranky has hell, but otherwise back to normal. I will write later about why she was cranky has hell... all I can say is SIPPY CUP WARS. We are home today, only because the dr put me off until tomorrow to take care of her. Although in the dr's note, he put ME off for medical reasons.... not because my daughter was sick..... UGH. Not impressed with him. He did call on friday night just after we had her in bed. Well, he got a nurse to call, and then fired questions from the background.... After all of the questions were answered, he said that I was doing a good job. That helped a bit, but I am still not impressed with him. :D