At 3:00, I called the doctor's office to see what Alex's test results concluded, if anything. The nurse pulled the records and then questioned, "The doctor hasn't called you yet?" "No," I replied. "Your son has an elevated white blood cell count. The doctor's with a patient, but I'll have him call you back as soon as I can."
You can all guess the first thing I did when I hung up because I'm pretty sure it would be the first thing you would do: I made the mistake of googling "high white blood cell count," which naturally led me right to the "c" word in less than five seconds. Good times, let me tell you, waiting for that doctor to call me back!
By the time I heard from the nurse, I was a total mess. Alex's fever seemed to be getting higher again, in spite of it being too soon for another Tylenol dose yet and I was freaking out. My mind would not let go of the idea that it was Really Really bad. (Leukemia!?) It didn't help AT ALL that when the nurse finally called me back she told me to take him to the ER because they couldn't tell from the tests what was causing the anomalous blood count. He had no outward signs of infection and yet his WBC was 21,000 (a normal white blood cell count is 4500-10000). I started to cry when I asked her how to get to the closest ER and I didn't stop until we got there half an hour later.
I did breathe a minor sigh of relief that the hospital was nice and had better-than-expected arrangements for children. Of course it took well over an hour before we met the doctor who then seriously questioned why we were even there in the first place. She obviously thought that our doctor had over-reacted and that Alex probably had a virus after all.
She did order another blood test, this time a blood culture, and she wanted to see the chest x-ray he'd had done earlier this afternoon. She called Alex's doctor and confirmed at least some of the reasons he'd been suspicious. This meant Alex had to have yet another painful blood draw, which he suffered through like a champ. He had to pee in a cup and then Dave ended up running back to our doctor's office to pick up a copy of the x-rays, just to avoid our boy getting any unnecessary radiation. On the way back, he brought us some long-over due hamburgers, which we all (with the exception of Genoa) greedily munched down.
Fast forward another hour and the doctor says she definitely sees something on the xrays: pneumonia. It's just a slight case, but even though his blood oxygen levels are normal, it's most likely the cause of the high blood cell count. She orders a shot of antibiotics and tells us to follow up with his regular doctor in two days. Pneumonia?! I spent the over two of the longest hours of my life worrying about cancer that turned out to be pneumonia!
Five days of antibiotics and he should be right as rain. It all makes sense in hindsight. The poor kid had quite a day though - TWO blood draws and a giant painful shot in the ass. He was still limping when I got him home to bed.
Genoa seems to have recovered as well. She hasn't vomited since about 3:00 this afternoon and she's nursed in tiny little doses and has been able to keep it all down. She even started to act normal (screaming!) again this evening when I was trying to comfort Alex, so that's a good sign.
Sadly, the story doesn't end here. We got Alex home from the hospital, tucked him in bed and told him how much better he'd feel tomorrow when that shot in his butt got the chance to start working.
He woke up less than an hour later drenched in barf. Hamburger barf.
We should've seen that one coming. Apparently it's not possible for only ONE of our children to get the barfs, oh no. They both have to get it! We feel awful for him. Here he's had the most difficult day of his entire life, health-wise, and he gets to top it off with the stomach flu and another whole 24 hours of feeling like crap on toast.
Please tell me this is the end of it. I'm not sure I can take much more!
