Follow Up

A few days after the ER visit, I took Emmett to his follow up with our pediatrician. I had all the kids with me, and Harrison was still having an extremely bad sore throat, so when the doctor asked how everyone was doing, I told him about Harrison and how he still wasn't doing better.

Here is what I found out:

The doctor told me that teenagers can get a micoplasma infection that can cause a severe sore throat that won't go away. So he put Harrison on a zpac. Before he was even finished with the antibiotic (that you only take for five days) his sore throat was completely gone. Hallelujah! To be honest, I questioned the other doctor's assessment that Harrison might have mono, for the main reason that he just wasn't tired enough. With mono, it doesn't matter if you want to be awake, you seriously just sleep, all day and night, and it still isn't enough.

Anyway, glad that was taken care of.

Now on to Emmett.

When I saw Emmett's xray it looked very similar to the xray he ended up with last year when they told me he also had pneumonia, and then the pediatrician really felt like he had RSV because of what the xray looked like.

Well, we knew he didn't have RSV because that test came back negative, but when our doctor listened to Emmett's lungs at his appointment three days later, they sounded clear. Based on the xray, he felt that Emmett had a different virus, that is actually worse than RSV, but shows up on an xray as very similar to RSV. So, we are very blessed that it didn't affect his breathing worse and have to be hospitalized.

By the time he had his follow up appointment, the retracted breathing was all gone, and his respirations per minute were back to normal. So, those are all really good things.

Even though he ended up probably not needing to go to the ER, I am still glad that I took him. I always feel like the ER is a double edged sword. You don't want anything to be really wrong, but when it is, you feel justified for making the trip...but you hate that something was wrong. If nothing is wrong, that is wonderful, but you feel like you just wasted a ton of money going to the ER.

In Emmett's case though, he really was sick, and how bad would I have felt if I didn't go and he ended up not breathing and dying because I was too stubborn to take him in? Yep, I would much rather pay the ER bill and have peace of mind in knowing that I did everything I could as a parent to help him be as healthy as possible.