Max vs. his body

Well, Leo has been on the scene for just over a week and in general, there's not much to report on the new baby front. The midwives told us that, because he came early, he'd be pretty snoozy in the early days as he'd still be gestating. True enough, Leo has been a good sleeper, getting up to feed every 2-3 hours, but he's been rousing himself for a couple of hours of active time in the middle of the night each day. Over the past couple of days, Leo's been opening his eyes and taking his time to scope things out a bit more. Almost certainly, he'll have more awake hours and be less easy to settle down over the coming days. In the meantime, we'll take the relatively restful time with Leo and be thankful for it.

In fact, Leo's first week would have been much crazier, had it not been for his sleepiness. Two days after Leo's birth, Max's lingering cough/runny nose socked in and he developed a fever. After three days of high temperatures, carrying Max around, irregular daycare schedules, and trying to keep Max separated from Leo (not easy - Max is hugely fascinated by his little brother!), Max's fever peaked at a rosy 103.5F. Unfortunately, his pediatrician canceled on us for some reason that day so we ended up at a walk-in clinic where the doctor took a brief look at him (no need to be brief either, I was the only person in the waiting room) and diagnosed (another!) ear infection. We filled the Amoxicillin prescription and hoped for a quick fix.

Thursday, Max was slightly better, but developed a noticeable body rash. I called Telehealth again (kind of like a triage room over the phone staffed by RNs, for those of you who are not from Ontario) and they recommended seeing a doctor within 4 hours, given that it might be an allergic reaction. Given that it was 8 pm when I made the call, this was tricky. Only one walk-in clinic was still open and I was not going to go to the hospital for 6 hours so, fortunately, Holly's mom was available to take us to the clinic pronto to get Max checked out (THANKS!!!!). Different clinic from the day before, but the same doc. Great. Once again, he was fairly brisk and, after hearing what Telehealth had to say, he gave Max a once-over and declared that he had an allergy to penicillin and that it would last the rest of his life. He prescribed new, more potent meds and we left. The only nice part of the evening was getting to hang out with Max and Grandma at Dairy Queen, trying to get enough banana split into Max to give him the medication...yes, Telehealth actually recommended ice cream for fever control. Crazy.

Friday, I picked Max up from daycare and his rash was even worse. At this point, I was pretty fed up with managing the sick Max/healthy Leo dynamic and was a little low on sleep, so caved and opted for the hospital route. Our friend J was gracious enough to drive us to and from the hospital (while narrowly avoiding a parking ticket!) so a big thank you goes out to her for facilitating the back and forth that night (footnote: After Friday night, we decided that we will be getting a car soon - this week was a bit too trying in terms of bumming rides from people. Stay tuned).

New paragraph to focus attention: for anybody in Ottawa with youngsters at home who can't face the likely 6-hour lineups at CHEO, the Queensway-Carleton is the place to go. The staff there was super friendly and are conscious of the needs of children. Many people work at both hospitals in fact and so deal with children a lot. The doctor who eventually saw us specialized in child care (I assume that's why she, and not some other doctor, saw us) and was phenomenal - particularly in the arena of keeping Max happily entertained while giving me the information I needed at a time when Max was typically asleep. If I ever need to take one of my sons to a hospital again and it's not a serious enough matter to go directly to CHEO, I will always choose the Queensway-Carleton.

So back to Max. We got triaged and registered in 30 minutes, called to the exam room after another 30 minutes and then 45 minutes (and a few stickers for Max!) later, we were seen. Not bad, IMHO. The skinny is that Max's cough and runny nose were untreatable and would run their course over time. Although the cough sounded brutal, it wasn't in his chest. His fever seemed to have subsided, but we should continue to monitor it. The rash did not look to the doctor like an allergic reaction, rather it seemed to be a viral rash associated with the other stuff going on with Max. She then said that this might mean that Max is not, in fact, allergic to penicillin, but that we should avoid giving it to him until he's old enough to have the appropriate allergy test to know for sure. Finally, she took a look at Max's ears and said that one was fine for sure, but that she couldn't tell with the other one due to wax obstruction. Memory is a funny thing, but I'm pretty sure the "fine ear" was the one the other doctor said was infected. Personally, I think he was seeing inflammation left over from Max's May-June infection in that same ear, but what do I know? The hospital doc went on to mention that the upshot was that continuing with the second antibiotic was now optional and up to us. In the end, we decided to stop messing with Max's system and retire the medication. Since then, there has been no feverish relapse so I think we made the right call.

The epilogue to all of this is that Saturday afternoon, Max finally morphed back into the son we all know and love, causing everybody else in the household to breathe a sigh of relief. Awesome.

Here are some pictures of the renewed Max as well as his little bro.