Pneumonia

Alyce has had her first serious illness, pneumonia! Last Thursday we could tell she was coming down with something. Alyce just wasn't her self. By Friday morning she was running a temperature. We kept her home from school that day. She had a classic case of the flu. Aches, watery eyes, fever, and a cough. We thought no big deal. Better this than a stomach bug. Tylenol was controlling the fever so we thought we'd save a dollar or two by skipping the doctor and letting it run its course.

Well Friday bled into Saturday then Sunday and finally Monday morning. With no sign of her fever breaking we knew it was time to go see a doctor. So Alyce, missing yet another day of school was brought into see the doctor. The doc listened to Alyce's lungs and wasn't immediately concerned. She said that if it were only a day or so old she would recommend letting it run its course. But since we were on day 5 she recommended a chest X ray. Mom took Alyce to the the radiologist and Alyce in the back all by herself she stood still for a film to be taken. Upon review Alyce did in fact have pneumonia. Lower left lung pneumonia if the location makes a difference? In any case the doctor prescribed two antibiotics to combat the infection if it were bacterial in nature. The morning after the first dose of medicine Alyce was a new girl. Her fever was mostly gone and her energy returned. Obviously we are keeping up with the course of medicine but so far the results are encouraging.

The improvement came Tuesday morning, however, Alyce had her last day of school for the year the next day. It was kind of a toss up as to whether she should go to school. We came to the conclusion that she shouldn't go to so that she wouldn't have a chance to pick up yet another bug right before Christmas. Alyce very much wanting to go to school to show off her newly lost tooth was itching to go to school. We didn't have it in our heart to tell her we were keeping her from school again. So instead we told her that school was already on Christmas break. It probably wasn't the best thing to do lying to her but in this situation there wasn't much downside to keeping it from her. So Alyce when you go about reading this post years from now understand we just didn't want to upset you.