Anna is sick

Anna has had a "cold" for about 10 days, she was seen last Thursday for ear pain, and her fever was very mild. It turned out that she had some build up in her right ear, the nurse irrigated it with warm water and peroxide. After cleaning it out, she had no ear pain. Sunday she started to cough, she does this sometimes towards the end of a cold so we were hoping she would kick the bug after a few more days.

Last night when I checked on her she felt warmer than usual. When I woke her up to check her temp, she complained of a sore throat. Her temp wasn't too bad, but still for having a cold for that long, it shouldn't have been that high. I threatened to not let her go to school for picture day, at 1 AM, after about 20 minutes of threatening, she finally took the Tylenol. I can't imagine what her temp would have been this morning if she hadn't taken it. This morning- 105.0.

I knew she needed to be seen, and tried to make her an appointment. Meanwhile I had to bribe/threaten her to take cough medicine and Tylenol after she threw up from coughing so hard, and had her get into a warm-ish bath to try to get her temp down. Her temp did go down, to 103.7. She was coughing up a lot of crud, I was pretty sure at that point she had pneumonia.

Just before I tried again to get her an appointment with her pediatrician ( I didn't want to take her to the ER, I have waited up to 4 hours to be seen, might as well wait in misery at home), she complained that her left chest hurt while taking breaths and coughing, then I knew for sure she had pneumonia. We finally got her in to be seen at 1:20 PM, after waiting in the exam room for 15 minutes for her labs to come back, she barfed all over herself. My poor kid! The chest xray she had after that confirmed she had the beginnings of left lower lobe pneumonia, and her White Blood Cell count was way up.

The doctor asked if I was "beating myself up", I said of course! He said not to, I did the right thing by bringing her in today, he understood basically that Anna can take awhile to get over a cold and it wasn't my fault. If we had waited another day, she would have had to have been admitted to the hospital. He also said luckily it is in the early stages, we caught it at the right time. He hadn't been able to hear any congestion, but suspected she had it because of all the WBC's floating around in her blood stream.

Anna got a loading dose 2 part antibiotic shot (because she had barfed in the office, and he wanted to make sure she kept the meds in her system), and we got to go home. We stopped at Wendy's on the way in hopes of getting Anna to eat something, she wanted nuggets. When we got home, she ate one and refused to eat anymore. I had to plead/bribe/threaten again to get her to take her Ibuprofen... She is her father's daughter, stubborn through and through. She then took a 2 hour nap.

She's up now, and her fever is 99.7. She looks so much better, thank goodness. I was so worried about her, and had prepared myself for a hospital stay, all the while feeling horrible that I didn't take her in sooner. I had this nagging feeling... next time I am going to listen , no matter what.

Edit to add: In my haste to get out the door to go get her "sick days supplies" I forgot to mention the most important part. Right after she told me her chest hurt, I sat down next to her on the couch and asked her if we could pray together. This surprised me very much:

"I already did."

I wanted to jump for joy, but instead of showing too much approval (you know how kids are sometimes, they like to do the opposite of what parents want just to watch us squirm), so I said good and asked her I could pray. She said yes, and I did.

Tonight after we said bedtime prayers, I asked her what she prayed for. She said that she asked Jesus to stop her chest from hurting when she coughed, and to fix her throat too. I asked her if she realized that about 40 minutes after that, that she reported that her pain was gone. Even though we were in the dark, I saw that she had a light bulb moment.

She said, "Ahhh, so he knew I really needed help today, and took my pain away because I asked."

I asked her if she felt Him with her as she prayed, something we like to call the "warm fuzzies." She said she did, and they felt yellow, pink, purple and white- all of her favorite colors. She thanked me for holding her hand while she got her finger poked for blood and got her shots, and for being there to clean her up when she got sick in the doctors office. We both got a good giggle out of imagining what daddy would have done had it been his shoes she had thrown up on. :O)

My daughters faith amazed me today. She didn't know if He was going to "help her" or not, but she prayed anyway, I am really proud of her. I am hoping that she has gotten a little taste of what faith can bring. For me, it was a timely reminder.