Doctor Mom
I spent most of Mother’s Day in the hospital. Below you can see the picture of my poor baby, Lawrence, hooked up to an IV. He had been feverish (up past 104 degrees) and throwing up the previous week. We had taken him to his pediatrician two days after it started. He found that both of Lawrence’s ears were infected and put him on antibiotics.
Something still didn’t seem right, though. I was uneasy the rest of the week. For one thing, he had never thrown up or had that persistent a fever with ear infections, and he was also complaining about his back hurting, which was something new. Plus, the fever continued even after he had been on the antibiotics for over a day.
On Saturday night, he developed intense abdominal pain that woke him up screaming every ten or fifteen minutes. We called the pediatrician at 3am, who advised us to take Lawrence immediately to the emergency room of the local children’s hospital. All three of us - myself, my husband and the pediatrician - were afraid it was appendicitis.