Friday Night Update

This just keeps getting better and better. At about 4:00, Charlotte had a diaper that seemed a little pink-tinged. The doctor had asked me on Wednesday if Charlotte had any blood in her diapers, and she hadn't at that point...but this of course got me freaked out. I called the pediatrician, who asked me to bring in a "sample". So we all popped in the car and went over there, poopy diaper encased in the thickest plastic bag I could find. They test it for blood, but it turns out that it was not blood, but rather some dye that made it through her system (which I think now is from the Trader Joe's strawberry yogurt Charlotte ate this morning which has some beet juice added to make it extra pink). She advised us to keep Charlotte off any lactose containing dairy for 10 days to let her body rebuild its dairy processing enzymes. While we were there, I was relaying the story of the day we'd had, including Nicholas' 9am throwing up incident. He had also developed a cough and congestion. She took a second to check him out...and he had a 102 degree fever. So I'm feeling like the best mom ever...totally oblivious to the fact that my son is burning up with fever as I'm tromping up and down the stairs changing diapers. She then informs me that she thinks he has influenza. You know...the thing we had the flu shot to keep him from getting? And, this is great, Missouri has the TamiFlu-resistant strain that can't be treated...and apparently flu shots aren't really helping prevent it this year anyway. 2/3 of her diagnosed patients had gotten flu shots. Great. So she swabs him for that, and for strep, but both turn out to be negative. She attempts to give Nicholas some Tylenol, when he starts crying because he won't take liquid Tylenol, only the "chewing kind". So off we went (after the warning that Charlotte would most likely contract this non-flu flu-like sickness soon) to get Nicholas the "chewing kind" of Tylenol. After which we went to get Charlotte some more diapers. What a day.