104.5 or Oh it's just a virus.

So when you wake up on a quiet Saturday morning to find your daughter has a fever of 104.5 you have a couple of options:

1. Panic.
2. Call the Doctor.
3. Panic.

For the first hour we did 2 of those three options.  Our little girl is our first child and she's not quite 2 so we still don't really know what we're doing.  Panic seemed the best option at the time.  The last time she had a fever get up over 103 it was because of an ear infection and this time since she was already being treated for another ear infection, we knew something else must be going on.

What started as a very long day turned into a very long weekend and early part of the week.  Each morning we'd get up, sure the fever would have dissipated, and each morning we'd find that boiling heat coming off our little girl's body.  It was exhausting for all of us.  We spent all each day trying to get her to eat and drink, making sure to give her the proper dose of ibuprofen so she could fight the fever in moments of comfort.

Monday finally roles around and having not slept for two days I had to drag myself into work wondering whether this thing would ever clear.  The doctor told us to come in on Tuesday morning.  She'd woken up Tuesday with a fever of 103 degrees so I opted to take her in.  The from the doctor's office we were sent to the hospital for blood tests and a chest x-ray....Which is damn near impossible with a 2 yr old.

At the hospital, we had yogurt thrown all over the place, a very messy diaper change in a bathroom with no changing table, needles (I hate needles), blood, and radiation...All the while my daughter just kept asking for mommy and if she could go home.

This is not my child just an example of the device.

Let me tell you this, the joker who invented the contraption to secure toddlers in place for such x-rays should be forced to sit in one himself/herself.  It's a torture device.  My daughter was horrified by the clear plastic vise grip body holder and I was horrified that such a device even exists.

Anyway at the end of a very long day we learned one thing: the fever was done, it went away as quietly as it arrived and I had to put my daughter through the ringer for nothing.  We got home from the doctor's and both collapsed in exhaustion and relief...She slept for 3 hours and I just stared at the ceiling wondering what just happened in the last 5 days.