Super Strep Coaster

Three years ago today, Carter had strep on the day before his birthday.  Three years later, history has repeated itself.  Darn it.

After having eerily similar symptoms on Saturday night to his strep just over a month ago, the sore throat eased up a bit but the low-grade fever remained.  He actually felt fine all week despite a consistent 99.5ish fever, but the bedwetting issue stuck around, which definitely had my radar up.  We had no issue with it since mid-antibiotics a month ago, and now suddenly he's wet again every night?  I mean, his tonsils were huge (like, almost touching), so I suppose it was possible that they were causing worse apnea than usual and doing whatever was happening to him for the month and a half prior to the strep, but it just seemed....odd.

All week I went back and forth with the pediatrician and ENT trying to figure out what to do.  The pediatrician suggested waiting it out because it wasn't worth bringing him into the office with all the other stuff that's going on right now if it was just a minor virus that would go away on its own.  The ENT suggested waiting, too, right up through today.  But last night when I realized that a positive strep test today would pull him out of school for not only his birthday, but also the much-celebrated 100th day of school, I decided we had to get it checked right away.

Luckily we got to see our normal doctor, which doesn't always happen in the evenings, and she was very intrigued by the bedwetting issue--that it completely stopped after the antibiotics, and started up again this week.  She was impressed by the size of his tonsils, though noted that his lymph nodes weren't too bad, which gave me hope that maybe it wasn't strep.  But sure enough, the strep test was positive.

On the bright side, my mother's intuition is on point.  Carol Brady would be proud.  But I was pretty bummed because all week the ENT had been telling me that they usually want two weeks after strep to do surgery, so if he tested positive that would most likely cancel the surgery.  So, of course, all of a sudden the positive test sort of re-routed our next couple weeks.  When we stopped at Wegmans to get the antibiotics I decided to not get any of the soft foods he'll need when the surgery happens, just because I didn't want it clogging up my full pantry when the surgery date was completely unknown.  I figured out my work schedule for break next week and tried to make peace with the fact our big master plan wasn't happening.  I was frustrated that Carter would have to miss more school and that he'd have weeks more of his apnea-filled sleep, and I was worried that if he's actually a strep carrier that we'd be on this endless loop of positive tests before they'd finally consent to surgery.  But then I actually got a little excited to just have some fun, pain-free bonus time with Carter (and Jacob, too) next week.  Lemonade out of lemons, I guess.

This morning he woke up fever-free and said he throat didn't hurt at all.  Since the doctor said it was okay to send him to school if that was the case, off he went--it is Valentine's Day, after all.  I called the ENT on my way to work and let them know the test was positive, and called the dentist to cancel his appointment on Friday (his birthday, I know--pretty sure I didn't set up that one!).  A little while after I got to work, the nurse from the ENT office called me and said that if he didn't have any symptoms and he was on the antibiotics, we were okay to proceed with the surgery.  Say what?!  So after hearing all week that it wouldn't happen if he had strep, all of a sudden we were back to Plan A. 

Maybe it was the insane amount of carbs from my office's Valentine's Breakfast, but by mid-morning I was exhausted.  I really think has a lot to do with the mental and emotional roller coaster that we've been on all week.  From planning on the surgery, to thinking he was sick, to thinking he was mostly OK, to thinking the surgery would be canceled, to thinking there was still a chance he'd be OK, to being almost positive it would be canceled, and finally back to where we started...suffice it to say I'm exhausted.  Now I'm just praying he didn't pick up anything at the doctor's office (two rounds of hand sanitizer) and won't at school or anywhere else over the next four days.  I don't think I can take another switch.

So, tomorrow we will just focus on celebrating our sweet little dude, giant tonsils and all, and then we'll do what we can all weekend to fill him up on his favorite foods before they're banned for a couple weeks.  Craig is off all weekend and Jacob has one basketball game and possibly a lacrosse practice, but that's about it.  So hopefully we can have a nice family weekend and get ourselves ready for a crazy couple weeks.  Keep us in your prayers!