Another Month, Another Trip to the Doctor

Katelyn has been battling a cold or something all week - cough, congestion, etc. But she had not been running any kind of fever and she was still doing all her normal stuff - playing basketball, laughing, playing, giggling, making books, etc. However, last night her cough started getting quite a bit worse. She was coughing pretty much non-stop. Then at 11:45 last night her temp was 103! We gave her Tylenol and that seemed to bring her temp down for the night. She actually slept pretty well. This morning when she got up her temp was back up to over 103. I called the doctor. I'm not one to always go running off to the doctor at the first sign of a fever, but her classmates have had strep, mono, and various other bugs and illnesses over the past 2 weeks, so I didn't want to delay. Also, she just hasn't been able to stay healthy. She was on antibiotics and steroids in November and again in December. The doctor did want to see her this morning, so off we went. Of course by the time we got there, the Motrin had kicked in and her temp was down to 99.4! The strep test was negative (which I thought it would be). When the doctor listened to her chest and to her breathing, he said things were really "crackly" down there. So diagnosis - bronchitis. He put her on antibiotics again, and went ahead and wrote a prescription for steroids, but would prefer us not to use those unless we need to since she's been on steroids so much lately. We're also to continue with all her normal meds, and increase her Flovent inhaler while she's sick and make sure we do the Albuterol inhaler 4 times a day. Hopefully, the antibiotics will knock that infection out of her chest and she'll be feeling better soon! Poor thing - she's had a sick past few months - flu, strep, bronchitis, and numerous other respiratory infections that required antibiotics and steroids. We're so ready for warmer weather!!!!