Happy Anniversary!

On January 24, it was exactly one year since Noe left for Tokyo. I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate this anniversary than to relive history. Noe left when both Matthew and Noah were in the hospital for RSV and Matthew had pneumonia on top that. What a year it had been.

Rather than dwell on the past, Matthew decided we should celebrate this special day in true Ybarra style. A week before this we had just gotten rid of this nasty bug that was floating around our house, hitting each one of us. Just when we thought we were doing great, Matthew decided to spike a 105 degree fever. No, that's not 100.5, it was seriously over 105 and it stayed that high for awhile. I am surprised he didn't have a febrile seizure. I gave him some Motrin and popped him in the bath while I called my nanny to see if she could come watch the other kids while I drove him to the ER. About 30 minutes later she arrived and we headed out the door. By that point Matthews fever was hovering around 103-104.

I have found that the one advantage of having little ones sick is that you get seen rather fast at the ER. The look on the lady's face at registration was priceless. When she asked why we were there, I told her what his temperature was. She looked at me like I was an idiot and said 100.5? Once I reassured her that it was indeed 105+ she was shocked. I am not sure if she was shocked so much about the high fever or the fact that he had a smile on his face as he walked in the doors.

They didn't take too long to call us back. Of course Matthew made me look like a fool, his temperature at that point was 99.5. The doctor came in and looked in his ears, eyes, and listened to his chest for a few minutes. Everything seemed fine, but she ordered a chest x-ray and blood work. I think she thought I was a bit whacked, too. Who doesn't these days?!

Matthew started this journey excited. He was excited to go to the hospital by himself. He was begging to walk into the hospital, since he's so used to being seat belted into the wagon with his brothers. He loved the attention, until the nurse walked in to put in the the IV and draw blood. He wasn't so thrilled anymore!



It turned out that his white blood cell count was high and he had pneumonia. Thankfully the RSV test was negative. He received a round of antibiotics through the IV so we weren't able to leave right away. Since it had now been almost 5 hours since his fever spiked, I went in to ask if he could get some Tylenol before we left. They asked if his fever was back and I said yes, from what I could tell (I have never been good at gauging fevers). The nurse checked his temperature again, and indeed his fever was back up to 103.5.

After the antibiotics were finished, and his IV was flushed out, we headed back for home. I kept him medicated every 3 hours for the rest of the night and he was doing great by the morning. The fever was almost gone and he was playing around like the other two. I am grateful that we escaped a hospital stay this time!