The Hodges Family: Sickness & End of School

After Mother’s Day, the end of school seemed to fly by! Luke started coughing that Sunday while everyone was here for Mother’s Day and by that night, he sounded awful and was running a fever. He coughed ALL night long so I took him to the doctor that morning. His regular doctor was out of town all week (of course!) so we saw one of the other doctors in the practice. I usually like her, but she didn’t really seem too concerned about his cough and didn’t do the usual tests that our doctor would do. She listened to his chest and said he wasn't wheezing, but his ears were a little red so she gave us some antibiotics and cough syrup and sent us home! No blood tests or oxygen levels or anything! So we went home and waited. Well he coughed ALL the next night too! We were so exhausted! He wasn’t eating that much but seemed to feel okay enough to play here and there but was pretty clingy. We took Caroline to school that morning and played at home for a little bit before Luke wanted to watch some TV. So we sat together and watched for a while and he was getting hotter and hotter! I took his temp and it was over 104 degrees! He was so pitiful and I was so worried since I had given him Motrin that morning.

I called the doctor and the nurse called back and said alternate Tylenol and Motrin and give the antibiotics time to work. So we did and it came down some that evening. He was better the next morning (Wed) but still coughing A LOT! That afternoon his temp went back up a little so the next morning, I took him back to the doctor. She said he still wasn’t wheezing (that she could tell) and since he wasn’t responding to the antibiotics and his temp was so high, it must be a virus or mycoplasma pneumonia (walking pneumonia). So she took some blood samples (finally) and they came back normal/negative so she didn’t do a chest x-ray but put him on a different antibiotic and a steroid. She said the blood test could result in a false negative, so she was basically treating him for walking pneumonia anyway! He was SO sick and missed school ALL week! But that weekend he finally started coughing less and sleeping and feeling better.

We celebrated him feeling better and the last week of school with a bowling trip and some fro-yo! Luke was the best bowler of us all and even scored higher than Chris and me (which wasn’t too hard since they had bumpers and we didn’t!):

Then the next week, I started feeling bad and was afraid I was going to get his bad cough! But fortunately, I only ended up with a sinus infection so it wasn’t too bad!

I was so glad that Luke was well enough to not miss the last week of school! They both had a great year and I’m so thankful for this awesome school and the precious teachers they had! They learned so much! Here they are with their teachers: