Pneumonia boy, part 2: Benjamin bites the dust

While I hopped in the shower this morning, Andrew started calling the pediatrician the minute their office was open. We'd decided last night that Benjamin's cough was (a) wild and (b) lasting far too long. He'd fallen ill on Thursday (the day I left) and had been running a temperature between 100° and 105° the whole week long. 

Everyone else who has had this sickness got really sick but then started feeling better. 

I was just barely feeling nearly 100% when I headed out for SLC, so I was fairly confident I wasn't going to be spreading germs. I was just sad to hear that Benjamin wasn't feeling well—and missed the sleepover at Grandpa's house because he wasn't feeling well—and then Rachel started feeling sick the following day (though she hasn't been as sick as Benjamin). 

Anyway, I was only sick for about a week...but I was almost better by the end of that week. 

Benjamin has made no apparent movement towards getting better. His fever was lingering, his appetite was down, his cough was persistent... It was feeling very much like Alexander (and those symptoms felt similar to Andrew because he was also prone to pneumonia as a child).

Unfortunately, the same storm that brought down all the branches last night before I got home also knocked out the power at various places around town. We were fine over at our house, but our pediatrician's office was without power. When Andrew couldn't get through on the phone he went over in person to see if he could make an appointment, but they were running on generators over there and weren't going to make an extra appointments until the power came back on. 

So we took Benjamin to the urgent care. 

Well, technically Andrew went to the office because he needed to (after staying home with the kids so I could go to Utah) and I took Benjamin to the urgent care armed with all the notes Andrew had taken about his symptoms. 

Benjamin has been pretty dizzy and hasn't been able to walk around for long periods. He couldn't even last sitting up on the exam table and had to lie down while talking to the medical assistant before seeing the doctor. 

Hi SpO2 was hovering in the low 90s, which rather explains how faint he has been feeling. Once again we'd neglected to pull out our own pulse-oximeter at home...which is probably okay because it doesn't work very accurately on small fingers...but still...we always forget to measure that.

Anyway, we walked out of the urgent care with a pneumonia diagnosis, a prescription for a different antibiotic than the one Alexander had been on (Alexander was on amoxicillin; Benjamin is on azithromycin), and the most delicious popsicle Benjamin had ever tasted. 

Technically it was a freezee. Or OtterPop. Or icy. Or whatever. 

Oh, how he raved about that frozen treat. 

We had to dig through the freezer to find one for poor Phoebe to split with Alexander because she was so jealous about the freezee Benjamin had (which, to be fair, he couldn't stop gloating about). 

Andrew picked up the prescription on his way home from the office and...hopefully Benjamin will start feeling better soon and we can have a break from being sick. We've been sick since the middle of June with this thing!