Sick

Friday after Lyric got home from Opa's, Travis had a doctor's appointment, so I had to leave work early.  When I got home, Lyric greeted me at the door, and pulled me into the toy room, where she sat in her little chair to watch cartoons and just looked tired.  Her hand felt very warm, so I felt her forehead.  It was also quite warm.  I asked Travis if he knew where the thermometer was, but in our house it's sort of like asking if you can find that needle in the haystack yet.  Needless to say, with no thermometer there was no way to tell how high her fever was, if it was even a fever, so we decided to just keep an eye on her and wait it out.  She wasn’t eating at all, but she was drinking just fine, so dehydration wasn’t really a concern.  We napped while Travis was at his appointment, and she was basically clingy and snuggly for the rest of the day.  Later in the evening, after sharing her “altered state” with a mom friend, I decided to take her to the local pediatric urgent care, just in case she had something that needed addressing with antibiotics.  She threw up when we pulled in to the parking lot, and was pretty subdued, despite the abundance of toys and cartoons in the waiting room.  When we got back to see the doctor, her temp was 104, which explains why she was so out of it.  They checked for strep, and wanted us to try to collect her pee to rule out a UTI, otherwise they were just chalking it up to something viral.  After a dose of Motrin for her fever, we went on our way.  She got home and crashed almost immediately.

So what does this have to do with the price of eggs in China?  Well, while I was being asked questions about her overall condition at the Urgent Care, I realized I had no real way of knowing if what was being asked was something that could actually be bothering her.  They asked if she was tugging at her ears, or complaining that her stomach hurt, or saying that hear head hurt, etc.  I said “No,” but the reality of it was that even if it was something that was bothering her, she would have no way of expressing it.  She doesn’t have those words in her vocabulary that we know of.  Speech delay means that even if she would want to communicate something like that, odds are she wouldn’t be able to.

On top of the speech issue, there were also the sensory issues.  We’ve never known when Lyric has an ear infection, unless she gets some other kind of crazy illness that drives up her fever.  There has never been a time where we’ve taken her to Urgent Care, the pediatrician, or the ER that wasn’t driven by her having a fever.  She doesn’t react to the pain or discomfort of things that would bother a normal toddler.  She can knock herself in the head hard enough that it leaves a goose egg and not care in the least.  Both the delay and the sensory problems make visits to the doctor for illness somewhat difficult, but it makes it especially difficult to figure out if she is even sick to begin with.  I’m positive there have been illnesses and ear infections that we have missed, purely because she’s just not bothered by things like a “normal” toddler would be.  As another example, when we were asked to collect her pee, it was after they tried the "bag" method that they use for young kids - which involves sticking a bag with adhesives inside of the diaper to catch the pee.  She tore the bag off.  They asked me to try to get her to pee on the toilet - she wasn't having it.  I was hoping I could get her to go in her potty chair, but no dice.  So we never did get the pee.  The sensory issues are another thing that make me hesitant about potty training, because it means she couldn't care less when she's wet herself.  All of this can make things extremely frustrating, and it certainly opens up a whole new perspective on illness and going to the doctor, let alone "normal" things for her age, like potty training. 

If you're curious, this is what cracked out Lyric looked like before I took her in:

Sick baby

I was taking the video without really paying attention to the focus, so that is why it's kind of shaky/weird.  And this is what she looks like with a fever of 107 (this one is from the beginning of 2012):

Thankfully she seems to be on the mend, fever free, and eating like a champ now.  Fingers crossed she stays that way.