Rebecca's Sick

For 10 days during May Rebecca was sick, we never did figure out what it was.

On Tuesday May 11 she bumped heads with Matthew. Matthew must have rocks in his head because he wasn't the least bit fizzled, but Rebecca was immediately dizzy and had an extreme headache. She spent the remainder of the afternoon on the couch with her eyes closed, complaining she still felt dizzy when they were closed. She ate supper quickly with her eyes closed otherwise she would be too dizzy and immediately went to lay down again. I gave her some tylenol and shortly before bedtime she perked up again.

The next day she arrived home from school crying that she had such a headache and was dizzy. Already by the first recess she was not feeling well and they had given her some tylenol at school. I am not sure why she did not ask to come home. She is usually quiet and reserved and doesn't like to draw attention to herself, but with Grandma as a teacher I would have thought she would just have said she wanted to go home.

So back to the couch she went. By supper time she was complaining that she had a funny feeling in her ears, they didn't feel like a normal ear infection, just funny. When she complained she felt cold I decided to get the thermometer out ... she had a low-grade fever, which later spiked.

The following day she woke okay but it was long and she was feverish, had a headache and was dizzy again. I was perplexed as this all started with her hitting her head. Was it a concussion? fevers don't come with a concussion; or was it a combination of a concussion and a virus? I called our family doctor but they said she would have to go to Emerge. So off to Emerge we went. I did not expect they would do anything but needed to ease my conscious and know that at least I had done something. Sure enough, nothing was done, they suggested a concussion mixed with a virus and if she wasn't better in a couple days to bring her in again.

Four days later we were still dealing with the same thing. She no longer had headaches but would get dizzy, this came with the fevers. Medicine would ease the fevers and she'd function for a bit before she'd tire out and sleep and the fevers would come back. She continued to be very tired, resting or sleeping a lot. So I took her in to our family doctor, who also suggested a virus, maybe mono. They did bloodwork (after which Rebecca nearly collapsed) and said if it continued after ten days to bring her back in. The blood work came back a few days later - Mono was negative but the blood did show some small changes suggesting something was going on.

Day nine arrived and I decided I wasn't waiting until after the weekend since it was a long weekend and we were hoping to go away for a day or so. I again called the doctor, who returned my call a little later and suggested we try an antibiotic. While I usually don't like to just treat the symptom without knowing what the problem was, at this point I figured a dose of antibiotics was worth the try and if that didn't work or the symptoms returned we deal with it more carefully.

So antibiotics it was ... gave her the first dose that night ... next day no more fevers, still a bit tired. Next day, all better!! And it didn't come back. So we have no idea what it was and we're still perplexed about how it started but have to assume it was a concidence. I write this down because I know I will forget the details later. When I took Rebecca to Emerge I had to wrack my brain, I knew she had had a concussion before, I remember sitting in Emerge at Mac with her on a Sunday morning last summer, but for the life of me I cannot remember how she hit her head or where she hit it. I search the blog but it didn't come up with any answers :( I search my old e-mails but no luck. So I figured I better write this one down ... hopefully I'll never have to search for it!!

Rebecca had her ups and downs, studying during the better times, resting, sleeping or watching tv during the nots so good times. Matthew wanted to be just like his sister, so we found him on the couch with her quite regularly.
















Playing together. The couch was certainly well used during those ten days :)