Matthew got sick over the weekend last week, and we figured it was just a bad cold since we both got flu shots. Tuesday, Thomas started coughing a tiny bit and sounded a little congested when he nursed. He was running warm but no real fever. Wednesday morning, Thomas ran a fever of 101.8 so I called his infectious disease doctor and his primary care doctor. They decided I should bring him in to his primary care doctor to make sure it was just a cold. Well, his primary care doctor did not feel comfortable just declaring it a cold and with Thomas' somewhat complicated history (though not as complicated as many other kids I know) he wanted us to go to Albany Med's ER. I was non too thrilled, to say the least. I urged him to call the infectious disease specialist to see if this was really necessary. While the call to the ID specialist did not mean we could stay at home, she suggested that we bring Thomas to another urgent care center where her husband worked as a ER physician. She would update him and make sure the appropriate things were done and in a more timely manner than the ER at Albany med. So, once again, Gung-gung (my dad) came to the rescue and came to my house (it was snowing, mind you) to watch Mary and Philip while I took Thomas to urgent care. Poor Thomas got the works done to him again: blood drawn (which required several tries because he's so chunky and also because he's been stuck sooo many times), chest Xray, urine specimen.
On top of those usual tests Thomas has to endure, they also had to do a flu test which Thomas really did not like. He screamed so hard during that one. If you know Thomas, you know how upsetting this all must have been because he is a very tough baby and doesn't cry unless he's really upset. He doesn't even always cry when he gets blood drawn or a catheter urine specimen is done on him.
Poor baby. In times like this, when I see my little baby suffer so much, I try to think about how Mary, the Mother of God, suffered so much when she witnessed the sufferings of her Son. As Simeon foretold to Mary, "And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed." (Luke 2:35). Considering this, I try to remember to unite my sorrows with her and those of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Anyway, Thomas' flu shot turned out to be positive. I was pretty surprised since that meant that most likely Matthew had the flu even though he had the flu shot. Fortunately, this meant that there was an "answer to the question" so to speak, and we could go home. This worked out pretty well, since we were only at this urgent care for about 3 hours as opposed to all day at the ER because they are so much busier at Albany med.
We were able to get Mary and Philip medicine for prophylaxis for the flu and when I started feeling sick, I asked my doctor for some medicine too. Philip still got it, but was only really sick for a couple days because he had the medicine. Thank God for medicines! Sometimes, I think about how grateful we should be for modern medicine (well, the ethical ones, that is). It's easy to take it for granted. If it were not for antibiotics, Thomas certainly would not be with us today with all his infections.
That's all for this week. Here are some pictures that I managed to take this week though.
This is Philip with his "mud trailer" he made:
Sorry this is late again. I have been trying to rest as much as possible so I don't get sicker with the flu. I got off pretty easy I think because of the medicine, but don't want to push it!
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