Twenty-six hours we'll never get back

Thursday morning I dropped the eldest daughter off at school and she was fine. Totally fine. The picture of health as far as I knew.

When she got home from school, she called me at work to say she had a headache and body aches. I had her take her own temperature while I was on the phone with her... 99.9. So, I had her take a tylenol and get in bed to rest. She had the flu back in February, and thus far it had seemed like a recurrence.

Friday morning the fever was up to 101.4. Given that it was Friday, I went ahead and called the doctor for advice, which was to take her in.

At the doctor's office a few tests were administered. Flu, negative. Strep, negative. Blood test were done but we didn't get results right away. At that point the daughter was complaining of pain everywhere, particularly in her abdomen, but she was not vomiting or anything like that. She did also get a couple antibiotic shots while at the doctor's office. But the doctor was concerned about her hydration and the nature of the infection, and decided to admit her to the hospital so she could be further tested and monitored.

I couldn't believe it. Twenty-four hours earlier she was at school and fine. The next day we we're on the way to the hospital. Ugh.

At the hospital they took a chest x-ray to make sure she didn't have pneumonia, which she didn't. They hydrated her by giving her a liter of IV fluids within two hours, keeping her on a slower pace of fluids and IV antibiotics for the rest of the stay.

We ended up being at the hospital for 26.5 hours, but left with as few answers as we arrived with. Miscellaneous infection of unknown origin. We have to visit the doctor today (a Sunday!) for another antibiotic shot. And tomorrow we have a follow-up appointment. The daughter hasn't had a fever since Friday and is feeling much better, but we sure didn't plan on such a big chunk of the weekend being taken up by a hospital visit.