Here We Go Again... *Sigh*

Annabelle has had a fever for the past couple of days, but no other flu-like symptoms. And Wednesday night as I was going to bed around 3am (I was working on taxes), Annabelle woke up screaming in pain. :( I let her cry a little to see if she'd go back to sleep, but it just got worse. By the time I went in there to check on her, there was NO consoling her! I tried rocking, music, cuddling, slow dancing, sippy cup of milk... nothing. She was obviously in pain, but I couldn't tell where from. :( She wasn't pulling her ear, but she was chewing on her sippy cup violently so I thought maybe her teeth were bothering her. Anyway, after Tylenol, Orajel, those teething tablets, gas drops, milk, rocking, and all of those other things, she finally calmed down and went back to sleep nearly an hour later. Then about an hour after that, it started all over again!

This time there was NO calming her. I was trying my hardest to not turn on any lights so that she wouldn't wake up any more than she already was. I took her into the kitchen where we sat on the floor in the dark in front of the freezer while I tried to give her a popcicle or anything cold to chew on (thinking the pain was her teeth). She wasn't having any of that. So I took her into the pantry to find some food to calm her stomach (if that was the problem). Sitting on the floor of the pantry, she ate a cracker and a jar of prunes. While we were in there she strained and grimmaced really badly so I thought maybe she'd pooped, but she had just peed. This made me think... here we go again... another urinary tract infection. :(

By this time it was nearly 6:30 so the sun was coming up and Annabelle wasn't going back to sleep. Fortunately a little food seemed to make her feel a little better, but I hadn't gotten more than an hour or two of sleep so I had one of those "I'm SOO Exhausted" headaches. Keith is out of town, so I had no choice but to hang in there until Annabelle seemed ready for another nap.

As soon as they were open, I called Belle's doctor to bring her in to verify the UTI. After her SHORT nap (everytime she peed it hurt, so it kept waking her up), we got out to run an errand or two and went to the doctor. Yeap, she's got another UTI! He said that since this is the 3rd one, once this one clears up he's going to start her on some antibiotics that she'll take every day to sterilize her urine so that she won't get any more even if the urine goes back into her kidneys. I don't know how I feel about her being on permanent antibiotics, but I guess we'll discuss that when we go back in for her post-UTI checkup. She'd be on the antibiotics until November, which will be a year after her first VCUG (see blog from the first one). At that point, they'll have to do another VCUG (I can't imagine how tough that is going to be by that time!!!), and if she doesn't have reflux anymore then she can stop the antibiotics. But if she still has reflux, she would continue it for another year until they do the test again and reassess. *Sigh*

Anyway, after the appointment I had to wait a while for them to fill the prescription so I brought Belle home for another nap. Again, her nap was pretty short (she usually takes 2 two-hour naps during the day), but as soon as she got up we went to pick up the script and within about 30 minutes of taking the first dose she seemed to feel 1000 times better. She still had the fever (even a little this morning), but doesn't seem to be in pain.... Thank God!

On a funny note, when we were sitting in the pantry so incredibly early yesterday morning, Belle provided a bit of humor (even if she doesn't know it). She looked over at the cereal boxes and saw the yellow Golden Grahams box between other cereal boxes, but sticking out a little bit. She looked at it and said "Bob-Bob" (which means "Spongebob"). I thought that was hilarious because a running joke on the Spongebob cartoon is that the other characters sometimes confuse random rectangular yellow items for Spongebob. :) What a silly girl, but at the same time so observant! :)