True Confessions of a Single Mama : Thanksgiving Week

The girls and I traveled to the greater DC area for Thanksgiving week. I was really looking forward to it, and wondering if it would feel strange.

Both girls were sick starting the Monday before. Amelie had a fever for a day and then bounced back and just had the typical toddler runny nose and junky cough. Calliope's symptoms were strange, though. She didn't seem very sick in terms of congestion but would wake up each night, crying in pain. She stayed home on Tuesday since Amelie was home due to the fever, but seemed perfectly fine... until the Motrin wore off. I didn't think much of it. She's always been ~~a drama queen~~ very sensitive to pain.

We took a taxi and then a bus to Mexico City on Thursday night. We spent the night there then flew to Dulles Airport on Friday. It was possibly our easiest flight yet! Amelie has finally learned how to watch a screen, hooray! :)

Our friends Emily and Annabelle had journeyed down from Brooklyn to spend the weekend with us. After discovering that our hotel didn't have a functioning pool or restaurant for our stay, we managed to switch (and upgrade) to a lovely Westin. We were all thrilled to be together. We finally got all the girls to bed and Emily and I settled in to finally catch up.

But then Calliope woke up crying. She was too sleepy to tell us what was wrong and I finally had to yell at her to get her to snap out of it. Then she said something about her legs hurting. And her stomach too, I think. I looked and she had these three weird bug bites on her left leg. And her ankle was a little swollen. I figured she had had them a while and just hadn't noticed. It seemed bizarre that they would wake her but I gave her some Motrin and at her request, Emily got ice and we rubbed her leg with ice. After a little while, she felt better and went back to sleep.

Emily and I shared the king bed that night -- she tried the pull out couch for about one minute and said no way -- with Amelie in the middle. Amelie woke up in the middle of the night to see Emily sleeping with a T-shirt over her face and started screaming, completely freaked out. It was funny to us in the morning.

We went to breakfast in the morning and then were getting ready to swim when Calliope noticed that she had more bug bites. And she was limping a little but as I mentioned, she's always been very sensitive to pain.

After the pool, I noticed that the other side of the same ankle was swollen. Now that was strange. Also there was the fact that I had had a worsening cough for at least two weeks, ever since a trip to Mexico City seemed to have kicked off a virus.

Annabelle and Amelie both went down for a nap and Emily stayed with them while I took Calliope to urgent care. For both of us. At this point her other ankle had swollen up and also her right palm. And she had a lot of back pain. It was hard for her to walk. They said I had bronchitis and she had a rare autoimmune reaction called Henoch Schonlein Purpura. The "bug bites" were actually tiny little bruises from her blood vessels leaking. By the time they saw us she had loads more of them on both legs. The stomach pain and the arthritis were part of it, too. They gave me a stack of prescriptions and told me to take her to the ER for stat bloodwork.

We stopped at the grocery store next door to fill my prescriptions and I pushed C around in a grocery cart and got a picnic dinner while we waited -- string cheese by Frozen (what a thrill for the kids after no string cheese for three months) and pretzel chips and tomatoes and donuts (C's request). Once the prescriptions were ready, we got yet another Uber and went to the ER.

My aunt came and joined us there which was awesome because it took quite a while for the bloodwork to be processed. Her urine and blood and strep test were all normal. They gave her prednisone for the pain and swelling in her joints and told us to see a local pediatrician in three days and we were finally released. She was so happy to be out of there!

The next couple days were hard for her -- pain came and went and she was emotionally fragile -- but after that she seemed fine. We saw a doctor three days later who said everything looked fine but if she got a bad stomach ache -- worrisome because Annabelle got sick the next day and threw up -- we would have to go back to the ER. Luckily she's been fine so far. She also said C would need weekly follow up for two months then biweekly for four months then monthly for six months, to follow her kidney function. Which mainly entails checking her blood pressure and doing a urine dipstick to check for blood.

Unfortunately, great medical providers are hard to come by in Mexico. I've reached out to two different providers who declined to see her -- I assume they haven't seen this illness before -- and now have an appointment for her with a third person. But I also ordered urine dipsticks and a pediatric blood pressure cuff to use at home and may decide to take over her care myself, at least part of the time. I have mixed feelings about it because on the one hand, these tests are simple and easy to do at home. On the other hand, I really strive to avoid being my children's medical provider. It's too close to home -- I lack perspective. But it's so much more convenient to do these at home! We will see.

The rest of the week went well. My cough gradually got better. It was nice to see family. The kids enjoyed playing outside with their cousins in the cold air.

To my surprise, they were both very happy to come home to Mexico. I thought they might be homesick for Brooklyn after a taste of the States but they are glad to be back and going to school... though Calliope is staying home today for supposed stomach pain. I have some guilt about not realizing how much pain she was in before and have now become a softie.