5,000+.

  One of the quirks of Bella’s illness is that any time that she has a fever over 100.4 degrees, she has to be to the emergency room in no more than 45 minutes time.    In my house, 100.4 hardly constitutes a fever – but I’ll leave that up to the docs.  In the case of a fever, she generally has to spend 2 days in the hospital for observation. (Which immediately leaves me asking really?  you placed her with us?  did I mention we have no experience with immune-compromised kids?) We had successfully avoided all of this so far.

 

  Our family has been slowly but surely passing around a bug that leaves it’s victims with a fever, aches, and errrrr…..diaper rash – comprendo?  We actually thought we had gotten through the storm without Bella catching it, and we were shocked to say the least.

  But, as one might guess, her little compromised immune system gave in to the germies.

 

  Friday night she wasn’t feeling well, but no sign of fever.  We did an early bedtime and crossed our fingers that it would all disappear overnight.  At 11:00 she woke me up complaining of a headache, and sure enough, she felt warm.

  We took her temp – 101.6 – and immediately called the on call nurse in her unit.  There was some debate as to whether to take her in, but in the end they decided that we should head to the ER.  A friend of ours came to the house so that we could leave Sylvia, but Brian, Naomi, Bella, and I loaded up the car and headed out.

 

  Brian wasn’t feeling good when I woke him up, but that was really the last thing on my mind (sorry, hun.).  We got to the hospital and got into a triage room as quickly as possible, because in the ER, there are approximately 5 billion different contagious diseases floating around.  Quite the irony, really.

 

  They got her in and started doing lab work.  In the meantime, Brian almost passed out in the hallway and the nurses had to see to him as much as they were seeing to Bella.  Poor guy was white as a ghost and had chills and hot flashes. 

  After 3 hours in the ER they decided to give her some really strong antibiotics via IV.  The incredible part is that we got her labs back and her levels were over 5,000!!! – which is as high as any normal immune system runs.  I am completely convinced that this is due to nutrition – but all that for another post.

  The good news is, that since her levels were so high, when we got done with the antibiotics we got to go home! 

 

  I know that makes for an anti-climactic story.  But that’s how we like them around here.  The less drama, the better, because when fostering, you can always be sure there is some more right around the corner.  We’re just praying it doesn’t involve the ER again.

 

  So, we are tired. (very. Still.)  but we are so thankful that we have three healthy girls.  (And Brian recovered too.)  Ahhhhhh – all in a (very long) day’s work.