End of May: Indigo sick - horribly sick, awful, terrible, and gross!

I should title this "please get me the h$%* caught up on the blog! We would skip this entry but we want to memorialize Indigo's first really terrible illness. After her birthday we had still had Mom & Dad with us. David went on a business trip to Milwaukee so it was great to have Mom & Dad here with me. Mid-week we had a lovely picnic with Ellen and Sarah on the beach at the lake. The next morning, Mom and Dad were getting ready to head home, this was Thursday before Memorial Day weekend and Indigo threw up. She had coughed a bit before throwing up so we thought perhaps that had made her sick. Well, Mom & Dad left and things went rapidly down hill. She kept throwing up, it was so awful to see her so sick. By about the 7th time we were on our way to the doctor. She said that it was from mucus in her throat. I was a bit suspect, but hey, that's the doctor right. Poor Indigo threw up again on the car ride home. I dropped off the prescription at the drive-thru pharmacy and then waited to pick it up because I did not want to take her home and then have to take her out again. She threw up several more times that day and then I got her off to sleep and David came home that night. On Friday she seemed to be doing better and was not sick in the day - after she went to bed, she threw up three times (I love my Whirlpool Duet and was never so greatful for having a washer & dryer). On Saturday, she did not get sick (but also was not eating anything). She was taking some gatorade. However, she started having explosive, need to change everything, diarrhea. We called the doctor and she said, "she must have a bug" duh. She said to call again if there were more than 7 instances of diarrhea - I think we were at six when she went to bed. On Sunday, she seemed to be okay again and actually ate some eggs and was perky. I had a morning shift at the zoo so David brought her to walk around in the stroller. On the way home from the zoo, she started throwing up again. She then slept but started again after waking up. I could not take it anymore and she was so weak. I thought of every terrible thing it could be and said it's not worth the worry and so we went to the ER. They were great and saw her right away. They gave her a pedialyte popsicle and basically said that they would observe her. They did not want to do iv fluids which they said they avoid whenever possible. Officially, if she still had tears they did not consider her dehydrated but they were worried. They also said that the doctor diagnosis of mucous was bs and not to continue the antibiotic and questioned why the doctor had put her on albuterol syrup. So, nothing really happened and then (not for the squeamish) she had explosive diarrhea, that was so awful that it went through her clothes, up her front, back and all over poor David's shorts. By now, I was already carrying three outfits for her so I got her all cleaned up and got the doctor to come and get samples for testing. They got David some disposable scrubs (hmm, he kind of looked good in them). So, everything they test for was a big fat negative. Then they decide we'll give her 10cc (10ml) pedialyte every 20 minutes. It's now late at night and she wants to sleep. Then she throws up the pedialyte popsicle they had first given her. In a way that was good, because then they decided to put her on anti nausea medicine to control the vomiting and gave us a prescription for that (after I asked). That seemed to help. So we finally come home and she sleeps through the night. The next morning she was screaming for water and they only wanted her to have tiny amounts at a time - that was truly hard on us. It's now the Monday of Memorial Day and she pretty much spent the entire day dozing or sleeping on the couch. This still was kind of scary to us because it's not AT ALL typical for her. I kept trying to reassure myself by reminding myself of what her poor tiny body had been through. She is so little and had already lost a pound which is a lot for her. Anyway, she had a few more bouts of the runs which was also horrible because even though we took every precaution and changed her immediately, she still got a horrible sore bottom and she was in so much pain - again, we felt terrible. On Tuesday, I had to go to work because of scheduled training events and David stayed home with her. When we woke up she had a rash all over her legs (of course, I am thinking, as I had been all along, Meningitis), but David took her in to the doctor (saw the other doc this time) and she said it was another way of the body fighting whatever virus it was. She recommended benedryl for the rash and a cream for the diaper rash. David said she spent all of Tuesday laying on the couch again. After that, she started to recover and was pretty much back to normal. It was funny, because once she got her appetite back, she ate everything in sight, to make up. Unfortunately, I had a major technical snafu and the pitiful photos we took of the poor girl laying on the couch with kitty pillow were erased. So the only photos are of the happier memory of her beach picnic and play. I have to say that this experience gave me a whole new level of respect and sympathy for parents who have children who are chronically ill or worse - to have your babies suffering and not be able to help them is so awful.