Kids
August 17th, 2011
Did I ever tell you guys about the time we — and I do mean we — flipped out royally and took Sam to the pediatrician, convinced she had a rare neurological disease for what turned out to be ah, her first temper tantrum?
Yes. Yes, we did. People really do that. In our defense, it was just after she’d had strep, and if you Google strep in children, it comes back with all these wackadoo side and after effects, and one of them is this thing called, ah, PANDAS. Mind you, I did not make this discovery, as I was too yanked out over whether she had meningitis to be concerned about anything else (“Sam, can you put your chin down for Mommy? No, down? DOWN?”), but she started acting, um, weird (HAAAA) and Adam came into the room, eyes nearly brimming with Tears of Parental Concern and said, “What is this PANDAS crap? I don’t like it.”
He’d been Googling. And my husband NEVER Googles. I AM THE CRAZY GOOGLER. But no, there he is, Googling about this INCURABLE disorder that causes nervous tics and OCD and bizarro behavior, and HA HA, a tantruming kid looks a lot like that, right? RIGHT. So we make an appointment for 20 minutes from that moment — I called the pediatrician in tears — and was fuming that I couldn’t get her in sooner (“Mrs. Rubin, that’s … in twenty minutes.”), and HAAAA OH MY GOD.
The conversation with the ped included a diagnostic line of questioning about her potential OCD habits, to which my husband replied entirely earnestly, “Well … she’s REALLY into the mail.” (And she is, but … oh God, it all was so LOGICAL in that MOMENT, you guys, and OH MY GOD, I KNOW.)
The whole thing turned out to be the unfortunate coincidence of the developmental onset of temper tantrums combined with the tail end of strep, and finally, the doctor who, to his credit, did not laugh, announced, “I … I think she’s just fine.”
There you have it. Whenever you find yourself wondering if you should call the pediatrician, now you know. I called — oh, did I not mention it was a HOLIDAY? — and made an EMERGENCY APPOINTMENT because my child was having a TEMPER TANTRUM, and they still take my calls.
I think of this because, surprisingly, my kid fell and basically bashed her head in and is GUARANTEED to have a black eye in the morning, and I was/am surprisingly chill about it, and … well. We’ve come a long way, baby.
I think that’s enough humiliation for the day.
Have a great Thursday!
*MGMT
Entry Filed under: Adam,Beeber McSteebs
42 Comments Add your own
1. Melissac | August 17th, 2011 at 10:19 pm
Oh my god. Without sounding totally lame, I sometimes read you and it resonates so deeply with me that I feel Like we know each other. Really.
Our kid, who hasn’t woke in the night since she was 9 weeks old, woke up last month screaming. I mean SCREAMING. Like someone was killing her or something. I snatched her up, checked her diaper, and tried to console her. She wouldn’t look at me or anything. She just screamed and screamed and stared at the ground.
My husband, the ultimate in cool headedness, looked at me and said we were going to the ER. I called the ped at 2 am and he said to go to the one over an hour away because she was so little.
We packed her up and on the drive there she calmed down and was babbling happily when we were seen… At 3:30 am. Diagnosis? Night terror with a side of pity diagnosis of maybe? A slight ear infection. She was absolutely fine. They basically patted us on the head, declared us first time parents and sent us home.
In summary, I sympathize.
2. Jessica | August 17th, 2011 at 10:46 pm
Hahaha, only because YES. We have done that. For similarly WTF things in hindsight. I demanded an expensive BLOOD TEST to see why my toddler was not gaining weight (verdict? Food strike.)
My BFF’s brother is married to this girl who is completely all organic, drugs are bad, etc. So their 6 month old gets a fever and is fussy. And they do give her Tylenol but after 4 hours the fever is back (um yeah… apparently this surprised them) so they took her to the ER. Where she was diagnosed with the ultra-dangerous and quite unusual childhood malady of …. TEETHING. They took their baby to the ER for teething.
I am still giggling. Honestly.
3. Jen | August 17th, 2011 at 10:54 pm
This isn’t as bad as a temper tantrum phone call (haaa!) but we called our ped at midnight once because Maggie wouldn’t stop screaming (she was 10mos or so) No fever or anything, just nonstop screaming and it was not like her. Eventually a 3am trip to the ER… diagnosed as the START of a MILD ear infection. OMG THE SCREAMING. Girlfriend has been a drama queen from the beginning.
Kids. They make us think WE’RE the insane ones, don’t they??!
4. H | August 17th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
Back in 1993 (before Google!), my husband grilled burgers for us. Our 5 year old son was eating his when he casually mentioned his burger was red this time. Yep, it was RAW and the kid had eaten nearly the entire burger. I was so freaked out (and angry at my husband) that I made my husband take him to the ER to see if there was anything they could do to prevent what I believed to be an inevitable E. coli infection. They pretty much laughed him out of the ER, in a nice way. Eighteen years later, he still tells that story.
5. Jess | August 17th, 2011 at 11:45 pm
Oh, I know this feeling. I have a dear friend whose kid has been experiencing weird neurological symptoms for over a year, and they’ve been trying to diagnose, and first they thought brain tumor but the MRI was clear, and on and on, til finally they figured it out, which, great, except oh god, it turns out it actually IS PANDAS, and oh god, seriously, I get depressed every time I think about it because OH GOD.
I am glad that Sam does not have PANDAS, is my point. But I know what road The Googling leads down.
6. Jessica | August 18th, 2011 at 12:25 am
Hey, at least the pediatrician gained a crazy parents story to tell at dinner parties!
7. Ris | August 18th, 2011 at 8:52 am
When my sister was younger, about ten, she was out at the movies with a friend. The mom called us from the ER and said “please trust our friendship because I took our daughters to the ER to have them tested for drugs.” Apparently they had been acting really hyper (like 10 yr olds hopped up on sugar and no parental supervision do) and she thought they took drugs and didn’t tell her. Where a couple of pre-teens would get drugs in my sleepy little hometown did not come into question.
8. Alexa | August 18th, 2011 at 9:05 am
Oh, this made my day. I canNOT stop giggling. “She’s REALLY into the mail.” HAAAA!
(And of course you know I can empathize–do you remember when I thought Simone had heatstroke and then I nearly froze her to death and then I thought her bluish toes were from lack of oxygen? Yes. Well.)
9. Jaci | August 18th, 2011 at 9:30 am
I didn’t even bother to call when my 2 year old slipped on the ice–and I grabbed her hand–and then she screamed and refused to bend her arm. She held it above her head and just SCREAMED while I thought, “Oh shit. I dislocated her elbow. How did I dislocate her elbow?!? OMFG!!!!” I just showed up in the waiting room with a screaming kid. THAT gets you right in.
30 minutes later, at the x-ray department across town, the non-stop screaming fit suddenly ended and she bent her arm and started playing. Nothing wrong with her arm–it was all a temper tantrum. I FELT LIKE AN ASS.
10. SwingCheese | August 18th, 2011 at 9:33 am
Boyo started crying, non-stop, our second night home from the hospital. (Shocking, I know.) My husband, who was in school at the time and had a HUGE TEST the next day, was asleep, and I was freaking out, so I called the “on-call nurse” at the hospital. She determined from my questions that he was constipated, and have me some advice on how to help him out (a warm bath, basically). And if that didn’t work, we were to take him to the ER. (You can see where this is going.) So I wake my husband up at 2:30 am and – this is February in Iowa, so it’s about 40 below – we bundle up and head to the ER. He fell asleep in the car. We got there, waited for two hours, only to have the doctor tell us that he was fine and hand us an amazing amount of information about baby constipation.
Fast forward about a year, we took him back to the ER with a very high temp and it turned out he had swine flu. But we were entirely calm during that whole ordeal.
11. Spiff | August 18th, 2011 at 9:46 am
Oh my gosh! My now 7-year-old daughter suddenly developed OCD symptoms and her pediatricians believe it was due to PANDAS. When I was talking to her teacher about it, she told me her daughter developed a different serious disorder due to strep. Strep it some pretty serious stuff!
Glad Sam doesn’t have it!!
12. Reading (and chickens) | August 18th, 2011 at 10:39 am
Between this and the Working Mother magazine Sundry wrote about yesterday, my week is SET.
13. KT | August 18th, 2011 at 11:33 am
Reading through your story and the stories in the comments made my day. I bet that peds have 10 million first time parent stories- it just goes along with the job.
14. Devan | August 18th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
This is so awesome!
15. Kris Taylor | August 18th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
My niece actually does have PANDAS and it is just…sad to think that strep brought on something that causes a six year old , a six year old!, to seriously worry about death. It breaks my heart.
16. Turns Out God&hellip | August 18th, 2011 at 3:14 pm
[...] Kids | Jonniker. (And she is, but … oh God it all was so LOGICAL in that MOMENT, you guys, and OH MY GOD I KNOW.) The whole thing turned out to be the unfortunate coincidence of the developmental onset of temper tantrums combined [...]
17. Lisa | August 18th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
The other side of the coin is me. My son complained for a week about a sore throat that I blew off as “allergies” because he didn’t have a fever. He finally went to the SCHOOL NURSE and told on me, so when she called me, I made him an appointment but I PSHAWED it because hello? ALLERGIES.
Hahahahahahahaha RAGING STREP. 30 days on antibiotics strep.
I win at mothering.
18. HollyLynne | August 18th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
I won’t Google PANDAS . . . I won’t Google PANDAS . . .
19. Lynnette | August 18th, 2011 at 5:48 pm
I don’t have any correlating stories, because if anything, I’m of the under-cautious variety of parent, but I’ll tell you that I just read this post for the third time because I loved it so much.
(She’s really into the mail! It’s logic, doc!)
20. Nothing But Bonfires | August 18th, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Hahhahahaha, this is awesome. “She’s…really into the mail!” I mean, not that your kid having a temper tantrum is awesome or your kid potentially having PANDAS is awesome (unless they’re PET pandas that you get to keep in your back garden / did I just make a tasteless joke about a terrible disease?), but well, you know. The whole thing. Haaaaa.
21. magpie | August 18th, 2011 at 9:09 pm
LOL. Reminds me of calling the ped IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT when my kid was a couple of months old. I can’t even remember what it was, but I remember feeling grateful that he talked me off the ledge so kindly.
22. Suebob | August 18th, 2011 at 10:01 pm
At least she doesn’t have the kind of asthma that makes her allergic to airline seats.
23. Suebob | August 18th, 2011 at 10:01 pm
Now all the people who never read the pre-Sam “Jimmy has asthma” post are thinking I am a big jerk.
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25. samantha Jo Campen | August 24th, 2011 at 11:15 pm
I’m late to the party but have to share:
Theo had his 6 month vaccines. I worried he would get a fever (had previously) and get chilled while asleep so I put him in a onesie and FLEECE FOOTIE JAMMIES. Cut to a few hours later when he wakes up screaming and BURNING UP. Like, I could feel how hot he was when I walked into his room. Stripped him down and took his temp. 103.5. I seriously thought we’d have to haul him to the ER and he’d be pumped full of fluids to prevent his brain from melting, etc. Called the doctor (11:30 at night) and explained everything. He said “Yeah, it’s because you bundled him up. One layer of cotton, Motrin, and he’s fine.” I guess a fever of 105 or higher means an ER trip. 103.5 was no biggie I GUESS. By the time I was off the phone his fever was down just because he was naked and out of those damn jammies.
Little did I know my kid would become King Of Fevers and now I’m all meh, it’s okay. He’ll be fine with Motrin.
Our poor second child
26. black jacket | September 19th, 2011 at 3:26 am
Sad, do not know who to call better. Obviously not willing to, but they must throw away the memory of things past the moment. Said to him, I had a good, you have been good.
27. cheap shoes online | October 4th, 2011 at 3:43 am
I guess a fever of 105 or higher means an ER trip. 103.5 was no biggie I GUESS. By the time I was off the phone his fever was down just because he was naked and out of those damn jammies.
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