This last month has been an adventure with Luke being sick on and off. He would have a temp or a couple days and then it would go away. At one point the doctor sent us to the ER because it was a Saturday afternoon and Luke’s temp was up to 103.4 and he had started vomiting as well. That was after the first week of whatever virus he had. This is also when they did some initial tests: chest x-ray, blood draw (looking for things like “walking pneumonia”), and a nose swab (looking for influenza of course these were all normal. Then came more coughing and then some runny noses. Then After 3 weeks he cleared up, there was no more cough or runny nose. But then a low grade temp (hovering between 99 and 101.4) stuck around for a good 10 days.
It was on the tenth day that I took look back to the doctor, for the third time during this sickness. This was the fun experience I wanted to share with you. First set of advice, if you don’t already do this or if you are about to be a mom for the first time…always take a spare set of clothes with you…no matter where you go.
The doctor decided to test Luke’s urine, since it hadn’t been tested already and he has this linger temp. The nurse and I were in the process of putting a bag on Luke, only after wiping the area down good with alcohol wipes…the nurse was having a hard time getting the bag ready….which meant Luke was out in the open for a while and it was rather cold. Can you guess what happened next? Yep…pee flying everywhere. When Luke was a baby, my husband and I used to fondly call this “free willy”.
To my credit I did think fast and put my hand up to stop it from “going the distance”, and he peed quite a lot. So unfortunately…after finally getting a bag on him….I changed his clothes which now had pee on them, and we had to wait. It was also a good thing I brought along some juice, so I made him drink…and we sat there for about 15 minutes and then the doctor came back in and told me we could leave and do errands or something and just come back in when he peed. So we did. The nurse also gave me one of those sterile cups to put the bag in when he was done…if I needed it.
So off we went. I didn’t really need to run errands….we went to K-Mart which was only about 6 blocks away. I got out his walker and we walked inside and up and down aisles. It was kind of funny since Luke walks at a slower pace…I would leave him walking in the main aisle and then go down a side aisle to get something or look at something real quick. Only I think he knew when I did this and he tried to run away…because he seemed to always pick up the pace of his walking.
The crazy part about this was that since we were waiting for him to pee, I kept giving him juice….and of course I needed to know when he peed right? Or else we would be stuck in K-Mart walking all day. So I found a discreet aisle no one was in, knelt down in front of Luke, dropped his pants and undid one side of his diaper so I could see the bag. I kept looking around, hoping no one saw me….who knows what people would think. I did this two times while we were in the store.
Finally after 30 minutes of walking around I decided we should just go and possibly eat lunch while we waited as well. But when we got to the car, I checked his bag one more time…this time I dropped his pants and everything out in the open….at least the car door blocked the view from behind….and he had quite a bit of pee. So instead of lunch we headed back to the doctor’s office.
Once we were there I could tell they were behind in their appointments from the morning and were now starting to work into their lunch hour. I also knew that we were at the end of the list, so we had a long wait ahead. So I took Luke over to the furthest alcove, where no one was….dropped his pants again and sure enough all that juice was catching up to him…and the bag was almost full. So I pulled out the sterile cup and then took the bag off, sealed the top together and stuffed it in the cup….which almost seemed too small for the full bag of pee.
Later on the nurse from earlier saw us and I gave her the cup before we went back to see the doc again. It turned out that the initial results showed no infection, but the culture that they did wound up showing some infection…but only a little. So that could explain that lingering temp.
Anyway….who says that a stay at home mom has a boring life? After all how many people can say that they play “cloak and dagger” while checking for pee?
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