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It was the most terrifying moment of my entire life.

I kept Madeline home from daycare for 2 days last week. She’d been running a moderate fever for those 2 days, right around 102, and by Friday it was about the 3rd day of fever so I decided to call the pediatrician. We got her in and were told that it was most likely viral (the same thing it seems we are ALWAYS told) and to call on Monday if it wasn’t better.

I had an uneasy feeling, even while the doctor was reassuring me that this was likely the highest her fever was going to get. Famous last words.

On the way home from the doctor’s office my car engine started to overheat. Looking back the irony of this is funny (in a very non-haha kind of way). Brian got it chugging along again and we got home in one piece. As I started to pull Madeline out of her car seat I commented to Brian how warm she felt. I knew she’d been running a fever and it had been a few hours since she’d had any Motrin or Tylenol, but still. We said we’d get her inside, give her some meds and take her temperature again.

As I lay her on the changing table she didn’t wriggle or squirm like she has been lately. She just lay there, so sleepy looking, seeming to barely notice as we started up the rectal thermometer. With Brian looking over my shoulder, we started to watch the numbers rapidly climb. 103.5  104  104.8 105.7.

At 105.7 we didn’t even continue. I grabbed the thermometer and threw it aside, screeched for Brian to get a diaper back on her while I grabbed my phone and got Rebecca into the car. Sobbing with fear, I buckled Madeline, practically smoking with fever and limp like a cooked noodle, into her car seat. Brian turned to me and said “I hope you don’t mind my driving a bit fast”. Becca kept asking what we were doing, why we were getting back in the car and “Mommy, why are you sad”? I tried to collect myself to explain gently that Maddie was sick and we were taking her to the hospital.

As Rebecca’s only prior experiences with hospitals was for the birth of her sister, she relates them to good and happy things. It broke my heart to break that illusion for her. I explained that this time it wasn’t a good thing, Madeline was very sick and we needed to get there as quickly as possible.

I called our pediatrician’s office and got their after hours voicemail which in turn gave me an after hours nurses line for a parter hospital a few hours away. I finally got through to the nurses line and left a page for the nurse to call me back.

While I waited for the nurse to call me back I started praying aloud, begging God not to take my sweet baby from me. I was terrified she was going to die. I’d never heard of anyone, let alone a baby, having a 106 degree fever.

Finally the nurse called back and we went through everything that was going on. I wanted to make sure that we didn’t need to have an ambulance meet us part way there. 106* fevers just aren’t covered in Mommy basics. I knew it wasn’t good, but at what point is it 911-worthy? (I still don’t know the answer to this.)

The nurse talked me down off my sobbing-fit ledge, reassuring me that because Madeline was still awake and somewhat alert and able to move on her own, it was a good sign. She did say that it was a good thing we were on our way to ER, but not to kill ourselves getting there.

Brian and I made hysterical calls to my mom to pick up Rebecca and his mom to… I don’t know what. At this point my cell phone was beeping low battery.

Finally we got to the ER entrance where my mom was doing laps in front of the door. She took Rebecca while Brian parked in the closest parking spot and I sped towards the door. Just as I walked up to the registration desk Madeline lifted her head off my shoulder for the briefest of moments and promptly threw up all over me. And I do mean ALL OVER me. My back, my chest, my hair. Even in between my toes. And through my freak-outs I whispered to her that if she’d just be ok, she could barf on me constantly for the next 20 years, if that’s what it took.  One hospital staff member passing by snapped “No more fluids for her!”

We stood in her pile of vomit for a while before the desk personnel finally turned to me and said “Oh, is the baby being seen?” No, genius, I’m just here for decoration. He asked what was going on, we told him of her fever and he said he’d put us next in line. Appreciated, but scary. You know it’s not good when they rush you to the front of the line in ER.

We went through triage and by that point Madeline’s fever was down to 104.8. Still high, but better. They passed us off to another scrubs-clad woman who walked us to the room. This turned out to be the same woman who snapped that we needed to stop any liquids for Madeline. And, as it turns out, she was just a volunteer. Not a nurse or a doctor. A bit dangerous for her to be telling us to stop fluids considering she had no medical weight to be throwing around, right?

We got in the room and were practically met at the door by 2 nurses. They had us get Madeline undressed to take her temperature again. Almost immediately the ER doctor walked in. Again I was grateful for the prompt response, but frightened at being the primary case in ER at the moment. They walked us through what was going to happen. They wanted to take some blood work, do a urinalysis by catheter and do a series of chest x-rays to rule out common infections and causes of such a high temperature.  Brian’s mom joined us in the room around then since she’d arrived just after we had and saw us walking to our room.

One of the nurses had me give Madeline a Tylenol suppository since she’d just thrown up the Motrin we gave her back at home. Another nurse walked me to Cardiology to have her chest X-rays done. They put her up on a child-sized wooden chair and strapped a seatbelt to keep her in place. I was given a lead vest and told to hold her in place. I chattered dumbly to Madeline all the while about how much she loves chairs and lucky her, this chair was her size. Anything to try to keep her calm. During the second series of x-rays they wanted her to turn to the side and raise her arms up over her head. Suddenly she had a lot to say about all of this and none of it was good. She clenched her arms to her sides and howled at me for trying to raise them. 2 nurses later, we got her held into place for the x-rays and were ushered back to our room.

Yet another nurse gave me a disposable paper shirt to wear instead of the vomit-covered clothing I’d walked in with. I changed into this and walked around with Madeline trying to keep her relatively happy. Nurses came in again to do a blood-draw in her tiny arm. I was enlisted to hold her down still while they did this. The look in her eyes while she cried broke me. She was so small, so sick and it felt like literal insult to injury to hold her down on a hospital bed while she was being poked and prodded for what already felt like the millionth time that night. They drew the vial of blood needed and left, then came back about 20 minutes later to catheterize her. Again I was enlisted to hold her down for this. Again she screamed and looked at me in bewildered terror. Again i tried not to break down sobbing and whisper and sing reassuring things to her.

After what felt like years, the ER doctor came back in and stated that every test they had run came back negative. The pediatrician and the ER doctor had both wondered aloud if she had a hidden UTI, but that was negative. The chest x-rays looked great and the blood work was all clean. So, they decided, it was in fact viral and should run its course in the next few days. They decided, just to be on the safe side, to give her an antibiotic shoot to cover their bases, though.

So, for one last time I was given the job of holding down my daughter while she was stabbed in the leg to receive a thick antibiotic shot that the nurse stated ‘brings tears to grown men’. After a “20 minute” waiting period, which ended up being more like an hour or hour and a half, we were given instructions to call the pediatrician’s office first thing in the morning to schedule a follow up appointment and sent on our way.

The next morning we saw the pediatrician and he agreed again that this was all viral and that he believed that the fever should be gone by the end of the weekend.

Thankfully, after a very fitful, sleepless weekend it turned out that the doctors were (so far) correct and Madeline’s temperature was down to a perfect 98.5 as of Sunday evening.

Throughout the evening at ER I kept joking to Madeline that I was going to milk this experience for all I could. Someday she was going to ask me if she could go out with her friends and I promised to reply “no! Once when you were a year old, you ran a high fever and I thought you were going to die. This is your payback”. I can’t begin to put into words how grateful I am that it turned out so well. That night, driving home from the hospital, I thanked God profusely for answering my prayers. And thanked Him even more for answering with “Yes”.

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