2:30 in the morning, Cadence wakes up SCREAMING. She feels like a furnace. I take her temperature- 104 degrees. I wake Chris up and we try to give her water. The first thing I do is call the on-call Doctor for High Desert Medical Group. He asks: how old is she, how much does she weigh, what have you tried? Yeah, you should bring her in to Urgent Care. I explain to the doctor that we went to Urgent Care the night before and were sent home without any treatment. He urged us to bring her in anyway.

Having felt like a complete idiot for bringing her in the night before, the second thing I do is call my sister in New York, where it is 5:30 in the morning. I figure she’s got to be up and getting ready for work (I was wrong), but more importantly, she’s got two boys and she’s my sister- so she would tell me the right thing to do.

A word about my sister. We are 9 years apart. She has two sons. And she’s no bullshit. Bottom line. So her advice to me, after C proceeded to puke up both the water we tried to give her and the Tylenol, was to take C back to Urgent Care and let those fuckers know who’s boss. (My sister doesn’t curse, but if she did, I’m sure that’s what she would have said)

Upon our return to High Desert Medical Group’s Urgent Care, we got the same nurse and just our luck, the same asshole Doctor. My sister said “I hope you give him hell.” This is what happened:

The waiting room was empty and no one was behind the check-in desk. When the woman finally came out, dragging her feet and moving as if the word ‘Urgent’ wasn’t in the name of the facility, she told me to “write my name down and she’d be with me in a minute.” I looked at her and let her know that my daughter was running a fever of 104, throwing up water and needed to be seen. She quietly picked up the phone and two amazingly nice nurses came out, took C’s temperature and admitted us right away.

When we entered the room, we told the nurse (again, the same nurse from the night before) that we did not feel like the doctor did ANYTHING for us the previous night and that we would go to the ER instead. I’m assuming she told Dr. Smug what we said.

When Dr. Smug entered the room he asked if we had followed up with our primary care physician and I almost LOST IT. I think I said something to the effect of: “No we did not follow up with our primary care physician because YOU told me that ‘it was nothing’ and it was probably ‘just a virus’ and ‘all babies get sick’ and ‘it’s going around’ and ‘just give her fluids’ and ‘alternate Tylenol and Motrin’ and YOU made me feel like it wasn’t a big deal at all.” **deep breath**

Dr. Smug still being all nonchalant and matter-of-factly, shrugging his shoulder said “Yeah, it probably is a virus. Babies are more resilient than we think, they can have a temperature of up to 106 with no problems.”  Chris told him that we read that when a child’s temperature gets too high, they can start having seizures “AND” I chimed in “her pediatrician told me that once the fever gets to 104 that we should call.” “Yeah, you can” says Dr. Smug.  I could have punched this dude in the face.

I finally told him “you know what, this is our only daughter, our only child. So if she has a high temperature two nights in a row, especially 104 degree temperature and has had a cold for almost two weeks I am GOING to bring her in- bottom line.”

“That’s your choice” says Dr. Smug. Ugh. I don’t like this guy. He left the room before I could kick his ASS.

When the kinder, more intelligible nurse came back in, she told Chris and I what they would be doing with Cadence. Kudos to her because I asked questions every step of the way:
What is that for?
Why are you doing that?
What will that do?
How long will that take to work?
What is the next step after that?

For every question, she patiently answered and I am grateful for that. They gave Cadence a Tylenol suppository to quickly bring down her fever and also administered fluids via an IV. THAT was an experience in itself. Cadence is so strong-willed, so I knew getting the needle in her arm wasn’t going to go down easy.

Not only did it NOT go down easy, but the veins in her arm are so small that they couldn’t find them and the more she moved and screamed, the more her veins moved. The next option was to put the IV in the back of her hand. Ha ha ha I could only laugh. I asked Chris if he wanted to hold her down and he said no, so the job was mine. I had to hold her legs and head, while one nurse held one arm and the other nurse tried to insert the IV.

Success! I had to let my Tweeple know.

They wrapped C’s arm up as if she had a cast so that she couldn’t pull out the IV.

1 blood test, urine test and a bag and a half of IV fluids later. Her fever was 97 and we were on our way home.

Thank you God.

That doctor. He’s still an asshole, but she has an appointment to see her pediatrician tomorrow, so he will have the final say in this episode.

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