Another Visit to the Doctor

On Sunday morning, Gloria came into the youth room where I was "teaching" Sunday School and complained of a sore throat. I was busy, she looked just fine, she tends to be a bit of a hypochondriac anyway, so I handed her an Advil and told her she'd be OK. Being the good mother that I am, I didn't give it another thought. . . After church we went to lunch and then I dropped Gloria off at Katrina's and took Jered with me. Rob put the boys to work for the afternoon over at the old shop helping him and Kurt with some long, over-due excavation. . . and I dug out the new shop. The afternoon flew by. When I picked Gloria up around 5:00, Katrina said Gloria had come upstairs once to tell her she felt like she couldn't breathe. Katrina thought she looked fine and since she has also been clued in to Gloria's hypochondriac ways, she gave her a drink or something and told her she'd be OK. I would have done the same thing. She had a great time playing with Elsie and didn't even seem to be flushed when I picked her up. Gloria didn't say another word about not feeling well until bedtime and then I figured she was just putting off going to sleep. By this time, she was hot and flushed so I took her temperature and it was 102!! Any mothering-type awards I've received should be brutally ripped away from me now. I gave her Motrin and cough syrup and let her snuggle with me for the night. It was a miserable night. She coughed and wheezed and burned up, even with Motrin every 3 hours. By morning, she really was having difficulty breathing. I called the doctor and they set us up with an appointment at 4:15. It was a very long wait. Gloria is a little high maintenance on a good day, but when she's not feeling good, she needs me to give 110%. We've gone to the same doctor since Gloria was a toddler and he's really great. He's very laid back and doesn't get too excited. He prescribes antibiotics very rarely and carefully and will often tell us it's "just a virus" and to "treat it symptomatically". On this visit, however, he was worried. He listened to her chest and looked very concerned. He ordered a soft-tissue x-ray of her neck and the nurse did all she could to take one in the office. Dr. Mike explained to me that he was concerned it could be something called "epiglotitis" which is an inflammation of the epiglotis and can be fatal without proper diagnosis and treatment. Although he has never seen a case in his 30 years of practice, her symptoms were close enough that he wanted to rule it out. The nurse was unable to get a clear picture, so Mike called St. Lukes and told us to head there right away and they would be ready to take an x-ray right away. He called in another doctor and explained the symptoms and asked him to wait by the phone and call me with the results as soon as they came in. (Apparently this was the on-call doctor). He gave me a prescription for a steroid and an antibiotic but told me not to fill them until I heard that the x-rays were negative. I admit, by this time I was a little nervous. I usually take Gloria's illnesses with a big grain of salt, but hearing the word "fatal" caused my heart to beat a little faster and took my blood pressure up a few notches. We got to the hospital pretty quickly and they really did get us right in. The technician asked if we were planning to wait there for the results because she had an order to read them right away and to call the doctor with the results. I told her he was supposed to call me and that I would just wait for the call. This was at about 6:30. We were downtown already, so we went to the shop to wait for the doctor to call so I could get the prescriptions filled asap. We waited and waited and waited. After all of the rushing and concerned medical personnel, it was quite anti-climatic when I finally called the after-hours service at 8:00 and they had the doctor call me. It took him a minute to figure out who I was and what I was calling about but he finally said he would check to see if results had come in and would call me back. Turns out she was negative after all. While I was thankful for that news, she was still having trouble breathing and I knew it would still be at least an hour before I could actually give her the medications that would bring her some relief. With the prescriptions finally filled and ingested, relief came pretty quickly and we were both able to breathe a little easier.