The fun never ends

It's been a bit crazy here the last three weeks. Illness has struck hard and fast. It seems like things are starting early this year. About three weeks ago, Ronan started running some pretty high fevers, occasionally spiking at 104. After two days of this, he got better, but then the next day began throwing up. That was not fun, especially since the only thing he wanted to throw up on was me. I felt so bad for him though - he'd be crying as he was throwing up and as soon as he could, he'd say "All done? All done?" but there'd always be more. Thankfully, that only lasted a day, but that evening, he seemed really out of it. At one point, Tom was holding him and Ronan's eyes started rolling back into his head. I couldn't initially get him to wake up, so we called the nurse line. They weren't too concerned about that, since we were able to get him to wake up, stand, and walk a bit. But they didn't like the fact that he'd had a fever for so long, seemed to get better, and then got hit with this. So the next day, it was back to the doctor's office, where they said he looked pretty good, but they wanted him to get a chest x-ray just to make sure there was no sign of pneumonia. The x-ray part was awful, because I couldn't go in there with him (being pregnant and all). I had to stand outside the door where I could hear him screaming for me. At least it didn't take that long, but it was hard for me not to cry too. But it all turned out fine, and by the end of that day, he was back to his normal happy self.

The next day, however, I started not feeling very well. I'd had some pain on my right side and my shoulder hurt too. I brushed it off as round ligament pain and sleeping wrong, but the pain in my side just kept getting worse. Finally, around 7 p.m., I couldn't stand it anymore and was practically in tears. I tried calling the answering service for my doctor, but ironically, no one answered. Then I called Tom at work, who had me call his parents. They met me at the hospital and waited with me and played with Ronan, which was wonderful. At first, there was a real fear that it was my appendix, so they had me do a CT scan. While we were waiting for the results, TOm was finally able to get someone to cover his shift and came down to be with me (and his parents were able to take Ronan back to their house for the night). The scan showed my appendix to be normal, but there was some concern about my gallbladder and my right kidney. Apparently, gallbladder issues can have referred pain in the shoulder, so my symptoms were pointing more towards that. I spent the night and most of the next day in the hospital. Finally, at 6 p.m. on Saturday, I got an ultrasound, which showed that my kidney, which had been enlarged, was back to normal and the recent urine sample showed blood cells in there, suggesting that I had had a kidney stone. After that, I was finally able to go home.

Then Monday night, I started having bleeding and cramping, so of course, that was alarming. I had a doctor's appointment the next morning though, and they did an ultrasound which showed that the baby is in perfect condition and nothing to worry about. So that was a huge relief.

Now I'm sick once again with a cold, but I'm pretty confident I can keep this from turning into a hospital trip. Though I guess you never know. :)

Otherwise, things are going pretty well. I took the dogs to the vet today for their check-up and they look good. The dr. and vet technician were very impressed by how well behaved they are, which was kind of a surprise to me. I mean, they're very good dogs, but they get a bit rambunctious, especially when combined with the vet, which they don't particularly love. So that was nice to hear.

Ronan continues to do well. Potty training is back and forth. Some days, he does really really well and other days - not so much. But he's working on it and overall is improving. Fun random story: the other day, we had a friend over and she mentioned to Ronan that she could hear the plane flying overhead. Ronan listened for a minute and then said, "No, blimp." Sure enough, it was the Goodyear Blimp. We hear it a lot, and it does sound different from most planes, but I was still kind of impressed that he could make the distinction.

Of course, to keep me from getting too proud, he also spent yesterday trying to copy the dogs as much as possible - Loki chewed on a stick, so he tried to chew on one (I took it away); Shadow lifted up his leg and peed on the fence, so Ronan did the same. Only that ended with wet underwear and shorts, so that ended that game. It was still pretty funny though.