Snow, Sickness, Bloody Stools and Snot.. The Last 2 Weeks

Gross title, huh? That sums up my last two weeks, though. For those interested, here’s the long version:

Hard to believe that two weeks have passed since I’ve found the time or energy to write at all. Although I was feeling good when I wrote the last post, things went downhill very quickly. By the time I went to bed that night, I had a fever of around 103 or greater, and that was just the beginning! Needless to say, we did not make our follow-up appointment at Children’s the next day, and we’ve still not been back. I was too sick to get out of bed for most of the day on Monday and the rest of the week wasn’t a whole lot better. Just when I thought I was getting better, the next round would kick it and we’d start all over! Thankfully, I can now say that I still have a bit of a cough, and my voice isn’t quite back to normal, but I think I’m closer to “healthy” than I’ve been in a few weeks – which is good, because for a while there, I thought I would have to get better to even die!

Thankfully there were no emergencies with the kids’ health while I’ve been sick, though I have worried a time or two. We’ve definitely got a few things that have to be checked out or at least noted by the doctor’s this coming week. Last week we attempted to  schedule R’s GI scope procedure, but we were expecting some winter weather the day before the proposed test, so I couldn’t agree when I didn’t know if we could even get there. Good thing I did, too — forecasters called for us to get 3-4″ of snow … depending on where you measured in our yard, we had between 14-17″ ! That’s quite a bit, considering it all came down within 12 hours! Anyway, it’s all melting now, so we won’t have to worry about that. I got a voicemail from the appointment desk to call to set up a new test date, but they had already closed for the weekend when I got the message, so that’s first on my to-do list Monday. Looks like we may need more than just the upper GI scan, too. R has started having pains that she describes as “shooting” between her abdomen and her colon, and you guessed it … blood in the stool. So, I’m sure they’ll need to be checking that out while we’re there. We’ve described these same symptoms before, but it seems to just come and go so they’ve tended to take the stance of “leave well-enough alone” regarding this issue. We were hoping that we’d be released back to our hematologist after the initial scope at Children’s, but I’m feeling a bit doubtful with the appearance of blood in the stool now. I’m also a bit doubtful that we’ll be out of there in three days, but … I don’t want to think about it!

D is having his own issues for us to worry about. He had a bit of a cold while I have been so sick, but thankfully, nothing nearly as severe as mine. He’s complained of a headache several days. After one particularly bad headache that landed him in bed, he produced quite a bit of blood streaked mucus the next morning. He didn’t complain of sinus pain or pressure, no active bleeds, but it was obvious that something was up. The next night, again, he had a bad headache. As you can guess, the next morning, he blew his nose to find more bloody mucus and a rather large clot .. but, again, no active bleeding.  He’s trying to be the tough-guy and make like it’s no big deal, but I can tell he’s a bit worried. Our hematologists office was closed a few days last week (after the snow closed just about everything in the state, it seemed), so I’ve not been able to discuss this with them. They are my second call on Monday morning.