Feverish Scare (All is FIne)

Reading the Sunday New York Times

Charlotte woke up from her nap on Tuesday with a 102.3 degree fever. Yikes. That's the highest fever I can recall her having had, ever. After checking to make sure that none of her wounds looked infected, I immediately stripped her down to her onesie, gave her some Tylenol, settled onto the couch with baby in my lap, and called the Cardiac Recovery unit.

The CV APN on duty was confident that I'd done everything I could and that there was no major problem. To be thorough, however, she had us come in early for our post-op appointment. Charlotte still had a fever when she went to bed, but by Wednesday morning (yesterday), it had broken.

Yesterday (instead of Friday), we went to the hospital to see Julie. I was delightfully surprised that Charlotte did not scream the minute we walked into to the place. Julie thought everything looked good. She ruled out an ear infection, wound infections, and a cold. To be on the safe side, she had us go to the lab for blood tests to rule out any infections that wouldn't be visible to the eye (staph, blood infections, etc.).

No more steri-strips or bandaids.

We learned in the late afternoon that the blood looks good. We're waiting for the culture results to come back today, but we're doubting we'll find anything bad.

Charlotte is still running a little hot, especially at night. But we've been told several times that "valve kids" can run a fever for a week or forever. As long as it is a low-grade fever, it's okay.

As you can see, Charlotte has no idea she had major surgery a week ago. She's quite obsessed, however, with the "boo boo" from the peripheral IV on the back of her right hand. It's pretty cute: "Mommy tish boo boo? Daddy tish boo boo, too?" Ah, toddlermania. Such fun.