Traumatic week for the Surdukowski's

Last Monday, I left for work thinking that everything was a normal day. Half way through the day, I called home to check on Tanner, like I normally do, and my mom says that Tanner is running a fever. Up to that point, it was only up to about 101. By the time I got home, it was 102.7. By 7pm that night, it 103.5 and stayed above 103 throughout the night. Tuesday brought no relief. I called the pediatrician and they wanted him to come in since he had no other symptoms besides a high fever. During the wait for his appointment, his fever got up to 104. By this point I'm starting to worry.

We get to the doctor and they can't seem to figure out why he has such a high fever. So they swab his throat for strep - nothing. They stick a swab up his nose to check for influenza, they put a catheter in so that they could do a urine culture to check for bacteria. Of course he had just pee'd so his little bladder was empty. So they put a clean catch bag on his little business to catch the pee so they could test it. They sent us over to have blood drawn. So he got stuck with a needle in both arms. Then they sent us home to wait for the results. Later that evening, the doctor called and said they wanted to start him on antibiotics. So I run over and pick that up and start him on it. Wednesday, again, brought no relief. This time, Tanner's fever peaked at 105.1. I freaked out. His body was so hot. We got it to come down with a cool bath, but he still was burning up. The nurses said that it could take up to 72 hours for the medicine to finally start working. So, taking their word for it, we endured some more pain. By this time, Tanner had had so many doses of Tylenol to bring the fever down, but nothing was working. We tried to get him to eat something, so he ate some applesauce. After that we tried giving him the medicine and he threw up all over himself and Nick. That was traumatic all in itself seeing your son do that for the first time! We got him cleaned up and braced ourselves for another restless night of cool baths and comfort for Tanner.

Thursday was the worst! His fever got up to 105.7 and again the nurses said that it didn't matter how high his fever got, only how he was reacting. I was ready to take him to the emergency room so they could do something for him. But we put him straight into a cool bath and that brought the fever down a little. Friday we took him back in to see the pediatrician and this time they found white spots on his throat. There was visibly an infection but they we're sure what the cause was or even if that was the only thing that was wrong. This time they gave him a hefty dose of an antibiotic through the form of an injection. By Friday evening his fever had broke. Oh how wonderful that was!!! Saturday, we had to take him back to have more blood drawn so the doctor could see how the antibiotic was working. By Saturday evening, Tanner was in so much pain from his throat hurting and from huge needles being poked into him, that he was very inconsoleable. Thankfully, though, his fever had not returned.

Then yesterday, we got a call from the pediatrician saying that she wanted to give him another round of antibiotic injections because of some of the results from Tanner's latest blood work, she wanted to be sure that virus was being killed. So back to get two more huge shots. However, yesterday was the best day yet. Tanner is on the mend. We're out of the woods, but we have a little way to go before he's all better. But at least we're getting there.

So needless to say, we're all exhausted from worry, little sleep and so forth.