House of Cards

Ya'll ... I was so excited but busy preparing for our spring vacation that I didn't get a post done in advance. I was going to share all the details, the highlights of what we'd see and all the preparation and planning that went into making this trip happen. (Seriously, we're talking prepping for flights months in advance with discussing medications with neurology to help with any challenges on the flight, coordinating to bring one of our amazing childcare providers along and weeks of discussing the flight with Teddy and watching videos to help prepare him, not to mention all the packing.)

Last week Monday, Teddy woke up early (around 4 a.m.) which isn't that extraordinary for him, but with all the pre-flight jitters, we were a bit concerned. So we temp checked him to find a mild fever of 99.3. Now, most people, wouldn't bat an eye at that, but when you combine that with a history of seizures and a flight to Arizona the next day ... well, that meant we got the prize of being the first people at walk-in clinic at 7 a.m. 

It's great that the doctors at walk-in clinic recognize us, right? *Sigh* At least they are understanding of why we brought him in on the first day with this minor symptom. He checked out OK, but they gave us the option of running the respiratory panel. We went ahead with that, hoping for more information to help reassure our vacation plans .... and we got a diagnosis of RSV.

That's a new one for us, though research indicates I'm sure both our kiddos have had it in the past. It's the first time we recall actually getting the diagnosis, though. I spent time with the nurse discussing and trying to determine if we were still OK to travel. She indicated we should be fine, as long as he could mask around others to avoid spreading it to those more vulnerable.

After a lot of tough discussions, including weighing in with our childcare provider who nannies for other families with little ones, we made the incredibly hard decision to cancel our trip. A trip with a child like Teddy is like a house of cards - a ton of fun and work to create but easily destroyed. There were lots of tears. Ultimately, though, our childcare provider couldn't risk bringing it back to the families she cares for, especially as one of the moms is due this week with a brand new little one. Also, we had no idea how Teddy would fare with RSV, whether it would be really mild like a cold or whether he'd be miserable.

And we made the right call. This was what we woke up to at 3 a.m. Tuesday morning. 

That's really high, especially since he had Ibuprofen before bed.

This would have been what we discovered waking up to get ready to fly out, and we would have had to cancel the trip that morning and not perhaps be able to get credits and refunds on most everything. That would have been even worse, though cancelling a much-anticipated trip is one of the hardest things to do.

But had we been on vacation, we would have been up between 3-4 a.m. in hotel rooms for the first 4 nights (and then only sleeping until 5ish for the next couple nights). It's truly for the best, though it wasn't what we planned.

We did still manage a bit of fun at the end of the week, as Teddy was feeling better (though he still hung onto a fever for about 6 days). He got to enjoy a farm show two different days, as did AJ. Both of them had a great time with that. We also checked out the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, which is a whole other story.

As for that vacation? We'll see if we can't squeeze it in and rebook it yet this school year before the weather gets too warm in the desert. We know we can't wait until fall when it cools off because the start of a school year and fall means we're almost guaranteed illnesses all the time.