Take 2 (and 3)

So yesterday I took Daniel back to the doctor, only this time instead of taking him to the Quick Care place, I actually was able to get him in to see his new regular doctor. I wasn't surprised when he said that the ears were infected for two reasons: one, he had started coughing everytime we'd take his temperature in his ear, which he hadn't done before, and two, when the doctor pulled on the ear to put the scope in to look at it, Daniel started crying and tried to pull it out of his ear. But it's always a bad sign when you're talking to the doctor about how you had just taken the baby to Quick Care on Friday and the doctor says, "And they thought he looked okay?" Dr. Aldous was concerned that Daniel might have pnemonia (and he said something about seeing if he'd be able to go home or if he'd have to go to the hospital) and so he sent us to the lab downstairs and then to x-ray and then back to his office. I should mention at this point that I had all 4 boys with me. The appointment was at 3:30, but it was more than an hour after that when we finally got to go back to the examination room. Of course, to complicate things, at a couple of the places, the older boys (all 3) would decide that they needed to use the bathroom. So after they took the blood and then did the x-ray, we got back to the office where we were told that yes, he did indeed have pnemonia. It wasn't severe enough for hospitalization, but they gave him a large dose of antibiotics (a shot in each leg) and we had to wait an additional 20 minutes to make sure he didn't react to the shot. And they made us an appointment to go in at 8:45 the next morning (which was today). It was after 7 when we finally got home. As stressful as it was to be having to go to each of those places and be at the doctor's office for over 3 1/2 hours, the boys were fairly good. Well, they were consistent, anyway. They didn't get worse as the time went on. Still would have been much, much easier if I didn't have them with me or if I had someone else there who would have been able to help take kids to the bathroom, etc.

A huge THANK YOU to Katie for being willing to come over and watch my older 3 boys while I took Daniel in to his appointment today. He was still pretty sad-looking and got lots of comments from the nurses about how he didn't feel well. One of the first things they did was to check his blood ox level, which was at 98 today, higher than the 93 it was yesterday, so that was definitely a good sign. The doctor listened to his lungs again and said that he appears to be holding his own, which is what he wanted to make sure was happening and that he wasn't getting worse. He had the nurse give Daniel another shot of the antibiotic (this time only one shotand a 15 minute wait after) and he sent over a prescription of a high dose of amoxicillin to the pharmacy for me to pick up. Poor Daniel has been so sick that he hasn't been crying very hard at the shots even though they really burn going in. I made another appointment for Thursday to make sure he's still doing well, of course with the instructions to make sure we call if he seems to be getting worse.

So of course when my 3 youngest children are all sick, it's all something different. But they do have basically the same medication for it.

And maybe some day I'll get to sleep again.