Sometimes doctors don't speak the same language, but other days ...

Heads up: This post will take almost forever to read. Sorry about the length, but I didn't know what to leave out.

We switched pediatricians and today was the first checkup. Many of you are aware of the issues I have had with the vaccinations for Michael. Let me start out by saying that I am not completely opposed to giving vaccinations as suggested by the doctors IF it is working for the child. Case in point, Bailey. We gave her all her vaccinations on the preset schedule the AAP comes up with, so she was getting multiple vaccinations at once. She would run a slight fever for a day or two and then be completely fine, which is why I didn't think much about it with Michael until his 4-month shots.

When those came along, I went ahead and did what I had always done and let them give Michael all his shots at once (this was a Wednesday). The day after his shots, he had a low fever (below 100). Two days after his shots, his fever broke 100 and I started keeping track. On Saturday morning his fever was as follows:

• Saturday: 1:00 am, 100.8
• Saturday: 10:30 am, 101.9

At that point, I called the doctor. Clearly, his fever was rising over time rather than falling. The Tylenol would knock it down, but when it would come back, it would jump up to higher than it had been the previous time.

• Saturday, 6:15 pm, 102.3

I frantically called the doctor back because the on-call doctor had never returned my call from the morning. Yes, it had been 8 hours since his last dose of Tylenol, but the fever wasn't staying gone. I received a call-back about 15 minutes after that from the doctor telling me to continue giving him Tylenol through the weekend and they would see me on Monday if it was still a problem. Translation: I don't really want to work this weekend, so let's give it some time and your regular doctor can handle it on her time.

At that point I was mildly irritated. It didn't sit well with me that I had to call the doctor back to even get a response and then that he didn't seem concerned. Sometimes, it's reassuring when the doctor seems calm, but this felt like he didn't want to take the time to address my worries.

I'm a reader, so I searched for things online; ideas on how to keep a fever down, what happens with prolonged fever, what are the risks to the baby, at what point does it become too much for their little systems to handle. I read the Tylenol bottle and all the instructions that came with it saying "do not give for more than 5 days unless directed by a doctor."

Enter freak out mode.

This is about the point where I had to rationalize, so I kept telling myself that it was fine. The doctor knows what he's talking about. I have a tendency to get worked up over nothing when it comes to my children. I'll do exactly what I'm told and hope that he's right. Monday would be day 5 of Tylenol ... maybe it wouldn't go that far.

• Sunday, 2:00am, 102.3
• Sunday, 11:45am, 101.9
  

Sweet! It seems to be going down. Not by much, but I'll take anything at this point.

• Sunday, 5:30pm, 100.4

Okay good, we've got to be hitting the end of it.

• Monday, 12:00am, 101.8

I won't even use the language that went through my head at that reading and the utter defeat I felt crushing me down.

• Monday, 7:15am, 102.8

I start frantically packing for the doctor's office. Putting the Tylenol in the bag, making sure I have everything I needed for both kids. I called the office right at 8:00 (and in hindsight I maybe should have made more of a nuisance of myself and just showed up at the office). They couldn't see me until 3:00 in the afternoon. Just keep giving him Tylenol. I even voiced my concerns about liver damage, and she said "no, just keep giving him the Tylenol and we'll see you this afternoon."

• Monday, 2:00pm, 100.8
  

I showed up at the doctor's office at 2:30 pm. There was only so much fretting at home I could handle. Michael was just a little off for the entire thing. He wasn't fussy at all, but I could tell he didn't feel well. He just wasn't as bubbly as normal.

At 4:15 pm, they called me back to have a look at him. The doctor looked him over and didn't see anything amiss. The fever was the only thing, which is what I had told them every time I called in. She sent me home and said, "if he still has it tomorrow, we'll want to see him again. My guess is that it's a virus that will have run his course and we won't see you. I'm sure it's just a virus he picked up that happened to kick in right after his shots."

I asked about the Tylenol and the liver damage and was reassured that he would be okay. I had been told by many people to alternate Motrin and Tylenol because it's easier on them and keeps the fever away longer, but the doctor didn't want me to use Motrin because she said it could mask other symptoms (like fussiness).

• Monday, 5:30pm, 101.7

I couldn't give him Tylenol because it hadn't been long enough.

• Monday, 6:30pm, 101.7
• Monday, 11:30pm, 103.0
• Tuesday, 7:45am, 102.6
• Tuesday, 1:45pm, 99.8

I didn't give him Tylenol because she said not to unless it was above 100.4.

Around 2:00 was when I went to the doctor's office on Tuesday, following my regimen of calling in the morning and then waiting impatiently until the afternoon when they could fit me in. Did I mention I never really left freak out mode from Saturday. My nerves were completely on edge. Something was wrong. I could feel it. Why couldn't they figure it out, and why did they keep telling me it had nothing to do with the shots but couldn't find any other symptoms? At all?

They took my back right away on Tuesday, and I got the impression that they didn't want me and my feverish child in the waiting room with other children. Fine by me. I can stress just as well in a tiny exam room as I can in the waiting room.

The doctor comes in, checks him out, says his throat is a little red and he may have fluid in his ears, but not enough of either to say it's actually a virus.

Tuesday, 3:00pm, 102.6

The doctor agreed I should give him Tylenol. Again. At that point, I wasn't leaving without answers, and I will probably forever wonder if I made the right call, but I allowed them to do blood work (which was painful to watch) and a catheter to check his urine (which was among the worst things ever witnessed). Everything came back clean, but they were watching the blood for bacteria overnight.

Day 6 of Tylenol and the doctor says to keep it up. No Motrin.

She mentioned meningitis but stressed she was fairly positive it wasn't, that she still believed it was a virus that was running its course that just happened to coincide with his shots even though he never had any symptoms of anything else before, during, or (as we would find out later) after.

I called another doctor at that point to see if I could get a second opinion. Dr. Dela Cruz said she could get me in the next day at 1:00 pm.

• Wednesday, 12:00am, 104.

I called the doctor PANICKED. SHOULD I TAKE HIM TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM? WHAT DO I DO? THIS IS WAY TOO HIGH! WHY DOES IT COME BACK HIGHER EVERY DAY? IS HE GOING TO HAVE BRAIN DAMAGE?!?!?

It wasn't a doctor on call at midnight. It was the nurse practitioner, and she was more helpful than any doctor I had talked to so far. She explained that it is completely normal for the fevers to get higher through the night. Yes, it is very concerning that he still has it on day 7, but no, don't take him to the emergency room. If the Tylenol brings the fever down, you've done what you can do. They could treat him at the emergency room, but it might not be what's best for him given they don't have all the information and his fever will probably be gone by the time you get there. The good news (yes, she was able to see good news in all this) is that if he were going to have a fever-related seizure, he would have most likely had it between 103-104. The fact that he didn't was very encouraging. They better be glad I didn't know this info beforehand.

• Wednesday, 8:00am, 101.5

I just went straight to the doctor that day. No one was going to tell me to wait and I couldn't possibly wait until 1:00 to visit the other doctor. On Wednesday they did a virus panel for 9 different viruses and ran additional blood work. The fluid in his ear was gone and his throat was not any worse.

The doctor was finally almost as concerned as I was and agreed something had to be figured out. The reason they hadn't run the virus panel right away is because they usually take about 9 days to get results and by then the virus is well passed and untreatable anyway. As if blood-work wasn't torture enough, they also did a chest x-ray to make sure it wasn't the start of pneumonia.

The doctor had called the Center for Disease Control (which they do only a couple times a year when they really can't figure things out, so she told us) and they were saying meningitis doesn't make sense because he's not fussy and Kawasaki disease has other symptoms too that he's not showing. Basically, they weren't coming up with anything new to check for.

The only reason I didn't break down was because Bailey was watching my every move. She was worried, so I was doing my best to stay strong for her.

By that time, I had already called and cancelled the appointment at the other doctor's office because I was still at my original appointment when 1:00 rolled around. When they couldn't find anything wrong but the fever, the doctor said we were going to have to admit him in the morning if his fever continued through the night. They would have to put him under and do a spinal tap to check for meningitis (which is the only way to diagnose it) and there were a couple other tests they were going to run at the hospital. My brain didn't get past spinal tap.

I am fairly positive I was in shock. My world was crumbling. Why couldn't they figure out what was wrong with my baby. He wasn't fussy. He had no other symptoms. What was his little body fighting. The doctor told me every day that it wasn't the shots. There was NO WAY it was the vaccines.

I called everyone I knew when I left the doctor that day. Everything had slowed down and I felt like every step was a process in and of itself. I had to tell myself to keep moving. This was going to be okay. It had to be okay.

By that evening, I had received numerous phone calls saying we were on prayer lists from churches all across the board. Denominations were irrelevant. The fact that there were so many prayers going up for our baby was phenomenal. Tony, Bailey and I had been praying for days, but this was different. This was tangible. Tony even said to Michael, "can you feel that, buddy? Can you feel all those people praying for you?"

It is still both the worst and best feeling ever. It was awful to be in the situation where we needed the prayers so badly but so amazing to realize that so many people were praying for him. People we didn't even know by the time it reached the end of the line.

His fever that evening was the last of it. We never went to the hospital to admit him. We called the doctor first thing in the morning and told her he was good. She still wanted to see him that day, and I was good with that. He was fine. I knew it. He was going to be okay. It was a high I will never forget. I couldn't tell people thank you fast enough.

The doctor was amazed. She said she thought for sure we would be admitted. We had ourselves a little miracle (huge miracle in our eyes).

So all that back story, and it's still not quite finished. His 6-month checkup rolls around and it's time for more shots. Tony and I had talked about it beforehand and we agreed we wanted to hold off on the shots for this one. He had been fighting some congestion for a few days and we didn't want him trying to fight off the vaccines and the congestion at the same time.

I walked out of the doctor's office more angry at myself than maybe ever before. I had allowed her to talk me into two vaccines with the promise that "these shouldn't even cause a fever, so we'll do these two now and the next two at his 9-month appointment." She told me again that the fever from the last time had nothing to do with the vaccines. It must have been a virus they hadn't tested for (because all those came back negative the week after his fever left). I wasn't buying it. She could say it til she was blue in the face, but why risk it?

That night he had a fever.

I called the next day thinking, "they'll definitely want to know. She didn't think those vaccines would cause a reaction, so maybe he is allergic to something in them and we'll be able to figure out what happened."

My call back from the nurse made my blood boil. She had talked to the doctor, and yes, a low-grade fever was a common reaction to any vaccine.

She had lied.

I don't deal well with that.

And the most infuriating thing was that it was only to benefit herself. She didn't want to have to keep track of shots that were different from all the other 6-month and 9-month olds she saw.

You know how this story ends from the first paragraph in this oh-so-long post. We switched doctors. Despite all my frustration with his first doctor, it still made me nervous. What if we liked the new doctor even less? What if we burnt bridges at the last place if the new doctor contacted them for records? Supposedly, Michael's first doctor is the best in the Terre Haute area. What were we going to do when we didn't like either. Maybe we're too hard to please. Not so, my friends.

Dr. Dela Cruz is wonderful. I didn't tell her how frustrating it was to be told that his fever wasn't from the vaccines. I wanted to gauge her reaction to the fact that he had a fever for that long, so all I said was "he had a fever for a week after his 4-month vaccinations so I'd like to spread them out and see how he does with each one."

And her response: "As long as he gets the vaccines, we can do it on whatever schedule you want."

There was no pushiness. There was no feeling like I needed to do things the way everyone else does them, not to mention the fact that we didn't have to be herded through a building like cattle like we did at the other office.

She talked directly to Bailey when she was examining her and was very good at explaining everything she did. We weren't sure on the flu shot, and all she said was that she gave it to her own children every year but we needed to think about it and if we decided we wanted it to let her know.

We didn't end up getting it, and she never mentioned it again. I like that. She treated us like adults and the kids like kids. It was so refreshing to be in a doctor's office and actually feel listened to. I could have hugged her when it was over.

Michael only got one shot today and so far (11:30pm) doesn't have any sign of a fever. I won't be surprised if he gets one, but I feel like he can handle one shot at a time. I also feel like I finally did something right. I think switching doctors was a good idea. Thanks to everyone who encouraged me.