The Slimick Family: Health Updates

***ETA (edited to add): Since posting this originally, on Saturday, we have been back to the doctor....AGAIN because Sophie was complaining of ear pain, and with her all her congestion and coughing I wasn't taking my chances. Luckily, our office has weekend hours from 8:30am to 5:30pm Saturday and Sunday. We got a 10:45am appt. today, Sunday, and low and behold the girl has an infected left ear and the start of an infection in her right! All this sickness and craziness must mean we are in for one awesome summer!!!

It seems as though we may be on the mend over here (fingers crossed) after what seems like forever. Jonah seems to be showing no signs of his ear bothering him, but is still coughing and while Sophie is still coughing too, the super duper cough medicine that the doctor gave us a while back (originally for Jonah) seems to be doing the trick and helping her get some sleep at night. Maisie on the other hand had another trip back to the doctor on Thursday, she was pooping quite frequently, which is a side effect of the antibiotics, but that was not my concern, no it was the the color of her poop. I had changed her diaper that afternoon and noticed that she had yet again pooped, but this time the poop was a pinkish red color, hmmmmmm, that's interesting was my first thought, my second thought to take a picture (no really it was) and send it to my mom or Neal and get their thoughts. The picture thing did not end up happening because the pinkish red color did not show up in the shot. My next thought, well her antibiotic is pink so maybe the dye is coming out in her poop, but just to be sure I put in a call to the nurse at the office and she told me it could be her meds or it could be blood and that I should bring the diaper by and they could run a quick test on it while I waited. I loaded up all 3 kiddos and the poopy diaper in the car and off we went. The test came back positive for blood in my sweet baby girls stool. I felt so sad for her, no wonder she wasn't showing any super signs of improvement and was still fussy after several days on the antibiotic. Sure, the antibiotic was healing her ears, but was wreaking havoc on her GI system or so we believe. So, what was supposed to be just a quick run to drop off the diaper turned into a full blown appointment with the doctor. Thankfully, my knight in shining armor showed up just as the nurse came out to tell me the test was positive for blood, he had heard the stress in my voice all day and knew that another trip to the doctor even to drop off poop was maybe more than I could handle. We met with the doctor and she seems to think that the amoxicillin is irritating her GI system and is the root of the blood in Maisie's stool. She took her off the amoxicillin and gave her a shot of rocephin (another antibiotic) to continue to clear her ears. We will go back on Wednesday (2/22) to test her stool again and see if blood is still present, if it isn't then we know it was the amoxicillin and if it is then we dive deeper to figure out what is the cause. On a good note though her ears looked great and are healing well and her lungs were clear so the RSV is on it's way out of my sweet girl's lungs!

While Thursday was not a particularly awesome day, at least we figured out what was possibly causing Maisie even more discomfort and the weather has been pretty mild here so we were able to get the kids outside and enjoy some fresh air. I also had a very sweet and dear friend drop a little ray of sunshine on my front porch late Thursday afternoon to help lift my spirits after what is proving to be a very challenging month for us.