I've Been Kissin' Her Butt Out Of Guilt

Poor girl. She had a not so fun experience last week. She is WAY more brave than I was at 7, (of course that's not hard, but I believe she is more courageous than most 7 year old girls.)

It all started last week. On Tuesday she stayed home complaining of a sore throat and belly ache. By dinner time, she felt great and everything was normal. She went to school the next day, but when I picked her up she was again saying her stomach and her "lung" was hurting. I didn't think much of it cause she often has "phantom" aches and pains. The next morning she still had pain so she stayed home from school again. She didn't have a fever, so I figured she would probably feel better after eating breakfast. I planned on checking her in and everything would be fine. Well, she wasn't. She spent the whole day lying on the couch and only moved to go to the bathroom. Still, no fever. When it was time to pick Dylan up, she stood up and doubled over holding her stomach. I then knew that she wasn't just being her usual dramatic self, but something really did hurt. I made a 4:40 appointment with the pediatrician. The doctor said it was probably just strep throat because it often causes stomach pain in kids. They did the test and it was negative. She had another Dr. come in and look at her and they both decided that since she did now have a fever and severe pain that we should go to the ER at Primary Children's. We went up there and she underwent an IV, blood tests, urine tests, chest xrays, and worse of all, a CT scan of her abdomen. That doesn't sound too bad except they have to fill your stomach full of fluid and the place they put the hose to do it is not a pleasant place. At one point, she said, "I can't take this any more!" I didn't blame her. She had an elevated white count, so they knew something was wrong, but the scan showed her appendix as perfectly normal. We ended up getting home at 1:00 AM with the diagnosis of "gastritis"-gas for short. I felt good that every possible test had been done and nothing was seriously wrong.

The next morning, her pediatrician called and said they grew the strep culture from the day before and now it was positive. She's now on an antibiotic and we pretty much wasted a whole night at the ER. The good thing to come out of it is that tomorrow she has to get 4 teeth pulled and she's way less scared about that compared to the dreaded CT scan!