Right on the heels of our Halloween fun, Howie came down with pneumonia and had a stay in the hospital overnight. Monday morning he was not acting like himself, but we all figured he was just off from a Halloween hangover (lots of candy, late bedtime, etc) and he would be fine after a nap. Before he had lunch he was asking to go to bed, which he NEVER EVER does, and that's when I knew something was wrong. He woke up with a high fever and told me his ear hurts. This is when I began to feel some motherly guilt. He had an ear infection about 3 weeks ago and was prescribed amoxicillin to knock out the infection. Unfortunately for Howie and me, the medicine was dosed to be taken 3 TIMES DAILY FOR 10 DAYS. EVERY 8 HOURS. There are so many problems with that dosage. First of all, every 8 hours? Do you seriously expect me to wake my little boy up overnight for 10 days to give him medicine that he really doesn't want to take? Yeah, that's not happening. Second of all, 3 times a day? That stuff tastes terrible. I consider getting 1 dose in him a major victory, and I was supposed to do that 3 times every day for 10 days? That's 30 TIMES! Whoever prescribed that kind of dose has clearly not tried to give a little kid nasty pink medicine. So you can see where I'm going with this... my delivery of the amoxicillin was not exactly perfect. I called the dr's office to ask if I really had to wake him up overnight to give him medicine, and they said I could just space out 3 doses over the course of the day. That wasn't much better, but a little. So over the course of 10 days, I definitely missed a couple here or there because I just forgot to keep pumping it in him (or delayed a couple times because I wasn't armed for battle... oops). ANYWAY, all that to say that when Howie told me on Monday that his ear hurt, I instantly thought his ear infection had returned because I hadn't given him that amoxicillin perfectly. His temp hovered around 102-104 all afternoon and into the evening, and we finally got it to come down with some medicine and I think he slept pretty well Monday night. Tuesday morning we got up and I took him the doctor and confessed my slightly shoddy medicine-giving. While I felt a small bit of chiding, the doc generally agreed with me that that dosing wasn't very good and saw Howie's ear was infected again but also thought his lungs sounded a little rough. We were sent down for a chest X-ray and then told we could go home after a preliminary x-ray reading looked fine. The doctor called me back later that afternoon to say the radiologist thought Howie had mild pneumonia and because of his high fever I should take him to the ER. I first thought this was a bit overkill but took his advice and we went to the ER. By the time we got there Howie measured in with a 104.8 temp... long story short we were ushered back into the pediatric ER, he was given a magic straw (that's what the nurse called his IV, which I found hilarious but Howie didn't find funny whatsoever), some antibiotics to kill the pneumonia, and we left the hospital the next morning almost good as new. It's amazing to me how quickly children can bounce back from something. He was given the antibiotic through his magic straw and by morning his fever had disappeared and he seemed to feel better! I'm so grateful for medicine and for how well he was cared for. He was really miserable in the hospital and kept asking me to take that magic straw out, but when we left he had at least part of the bounce in his step back and he told me he had a good time in the hospital. That's kid logic for you.
