?????

Guess what?!

Riley is now on day 20 of his fever. And I'm already counting on it being here tomorrow too, so I'm just rounding it up to 3 weeks. BaZaAr is all I think!

We took Riley back to the doctor on Monday, because after his fever had stayed under 100.5 for a few days (what medical peeps consider a fever), it went back up to 101.3 last Sunday. The doctor had previously tested his blood count. To make sure his white blood cell levels were ok. Normal. So on Monday, the doctor tested for C-Protein (something that elevates when something is wrong in your body, or you feel pain) in his blood. Normal. At this point, the doctor just assumed there was a bacterial infection that could not be pin pointed, and put Riley on an antibiotic.

So the school has a rule. Fevers need to be under 99* for 24 hours without any medicine keeping it down (meaning Tylenol/Motrin). For the first time I broke this rule. A nurse friend told me the medical profession didn't consider a fever until it reaches 100.5*. I made my own compromise.... Riley's fever stayed under 100* and he had been on antibiotics. He was showing true signs of depression from staying home. He was having no other side effects. I sent him to school and he toughed out 3 days.

Yesterday, or day 4 of his 5 day antibiotic, he came home with a fever of 101.3*. Arg!! I called the nurse and she wanted him to get in again. I took him in, and this time they ran every lab test that they could. If you look at Riley on paper, he looks like a perfectly healthy boy. If you look at him in person, he has a pale face, with slightly flushed cheeks, and glazed over eyes. They took blood and urine samples. Ran it all. She did compare them to Monday's tests, and levels dropped a little, but still had everything in the normal range. The only thing we know he doesn't have is mono and leukemia.

What do we do now?

She did say that since this all started with Influenza B, we can cross our fingers that it is lingering. If this fever came about with no other symptom, she'd be very alarmed. She still thinks 20 days is pretty long to run a fever. The doctor's office is making us an appointment with an "infectious disease specialist" so they can run more specific tests. She said that most likely the soonest we'd be getting in would be a week or so. This will give us more time to see if the fever fixes itself, and we can cancel if it does so.

As of now, they say Riley isn't contagious, but he should follow the school rules and keep him home for now. (I may need to call and talk to the nurse about that rule... we'll see.)

(A co-worker of mine had a daughter come down with a fever several years ago.... it hung on like this and she was also referred to an IDS. Turns out her body had started spiking to fight off things in her body, that weren't really there. She was put on steroids, and grew out of it eventually. Completely harmless, no matter how scary "Infection Disease" sounds.)