Maddie Visits the Doctor

Maddie's 2 year old well visit was tainted by her vomiting last night. She's been having a rough time and not feeling fantastic for about 10 days now, I wasn't broken hearted to walk in with more conclusive evidence of our troubles. You don't give a poor doctor much to go on when all you can tell them is, "My kid is more fussy than normal." She had a tiny temp of 99.1, but that's nothing to write home about. They couldn't see anything wrong on the surface, but the wonderful doctor said she'd do whatever she could to find out what was going on. They swabbed for strep, bagged her for urine and did blood tests since they had to do a standard 2 yr anemia test anyway. The bagging for urine was the worst part. I can barely clean her during a diaper change, so for the nurse to really clean her up enough for a urine test was a disaster. Then to stick a bag to her and put a diaper back on with a huge plastic bag sticking out her diaper was not in her idea of "fun" for the morning. She screamed the whole time and for about 1 hr 10 minutes longer, but who is counting...me. She was so wild to get the bag off that she was clawing at the front of the diaper to get it ripped off. For a solid hour I had to let her scream in my ear while I held her chest against my chest so I could keep her hands away from the diaper and the urine bag. She wouldn't drink anything, even the normally tempting juice box they brought in for her. She just kept screaming, "Take it off! Take it off Maddie!" After one hour, a nurse checked on us again and when I had to report again she hadn't taken in any fluids, she offered Maddie a Pedialyte popsicle. That peaked her interest. We settled on blue and the nurse left to go get the popsicle since she was calming down. Between her leaving and her return, the lab lady came in to draw her blood. Darn if we couldn't have worse timing...so we had a needle stick and lots more screaming. They put a bandaid on her finger and she went nuts to have me take it off. After about 5 minutes I figured it had been long enough and I could buy some points if I took it off for her, so we removed the terrible, awful bandaid. She snuggled right into my chest and looked ready to sleep. After some coaxing I got her to let me eat her popsicle and made sure to mention how yummy it was. Eventually she smiled and played along, eating half of it. Finally! Some intake. That is the only way we can get output, right? Especially with a dehydrated toddler. Then more negotiating and we got half a juice box and after a very long rest we got the other half of the popsicle down. Now just a waiting game to get her to pee. In the end it took 2 1/2 hours for her to deposit her urine sample in the bag. When the nurse came in and saw we had a sample, she was excited and asked Maddie if she could take off the bag now. Maddie was pretty excited too. She kept saying, "Thank you" to the nurse. It was cute. Then she just kept telling me Maddie go home now while we waited for the results to come back from the lab. The results: Negative for strep. White blood cell count is normal. No urinary tract infection. No real answer. Bless the doctor and the nurses though for being willing to surrender a room for the better part of 3 hours to a screaming 2 year old and her exhausted mommy. Oh yeah, the official stats for my HUGE 2 year old: 22 lb 3 oz (I know, our little half pint ball of fire couldn't even turn around in her car seat until she was 18months old, she's 3rd percentile still) xx inches tall?? (I can't remember, just on the tiny side of the growth charts still) 19 1/4" head (they measured 4 times this visit as is standard procedure since her head is 90% and all doctors can't believe the difference between weight and head percentiles...)