The Jacksonville Coopers!: May 2009

Well it certainly was memorable to say the least! Let me start from the beginning...

About a month ago I had asked for the Friday off before Memorial Weekend. The plan was to start driving up to Charlotte as soon as I got off work on Thursday. What I hadn't planned on was it raining cats and dogs all of last week. So when Thursday morning came along, I knew the rain was going to make the drive a nightmare so I asked to leave early to be able to get in as many daylight driving hours as possible. Once I got home, and we had everything ready to go, it was just before 2:30pm and I had brought out the last item I needed to pack into the truck. Doyle comes around from the other side of the truck carrying Cade and said "you won't believe what just happened". Apparently, Cade had thrown up a little in his mouth when Doyle was buckling him in and he had a low grade fever to boot. So we stood there in the driveway with the truck already running and everything packed up. We had a decision to make. Call the weekend off and stay home or give Cade some tylenol and go for it. Well, needless to say.... we went for it.

I noticed it was 2:32pm as we were driving down the road. First we dropped Kit off at the airport Pet Paradise. I drove first because I knew I would be too tired to do it towards the end of the trip. Everything was moving along fine until we got into Georgia. Suddenly there was all this traffic. Three lanes being squeezed into two and then another sign saying the right lane was going to go away also! We literally were stop and barely go at this point. It took forever to get out of that mess. Not to mention it's also raining cats and dogs. Finally we get out of the construction and decide to get something to eat. Plus the baby is starting to fuss so she was hungry to. I stopped off at a Wendy's because we thought Cade would eat it. Not really. I think he eventually ate some fries before we left.

Then it was back on the road again. Doyle set up the travel DVD player so Cade could watch cartoons during the drive. He was pretty tired at this point. But as usual, he was coughing but at least his fever had gone down with the tylenol. Down the road we go. We ended up driving through some smoke. I'm not sure if it was a controlled burn or what. This sparked an absolute terrible coughing attack with Cade. It was so bad I told Doyle we needed to pull over. I seriously was afraid that Cade wasn't getting enough oxygen! His face was completely red and he just couldn't stop coughing. Doyle took the next exit. I called Cade's pediatrician and spoke with the after hours service. She told me she would have the on-call nurse call me back. So we pretty much camped out at this gas station for 15 minutes at least. Cade was better after we took him out of his car seat but his fever had spiked to 102 so more tylenol was given. I went inside to see if they had any children's cough medicine at all. Of course they didn't. I kept waiting for that damned phone to ring and do you know that it never did!! It's always possible that we were in a bad phone coverage area at the exact moment they returned my call, but I doubt it. I was so ticked off.

So anyway, we decided Cade was better and we took off down the road. I still wanted to look for some cough medicine for him. He couldn't go to sleep for more than just a few minutes because he would start coughing again. So again Doyle took another exit and luckily we found a run down grocery store. They actually had cough medicine that said it was for 2-6 year olds. So I gave him that and he pretty much went right to sleep after that. You could just hear the phlegm and his every breath though. I felt so bad for him!

By this time it was around 9pm I think. I had tried feeding Dylan after giving Cade the medicine but she just kept crying and wouldn't take it. So here she was crying again. I ended up climbing back there and trying to console her. She just kept crying and crying. It was miserable. We ended up stopping around 10:30pm at another gas station. I tried feeding her again and again she wouldn't take it. I pumped her up with some gas-x and tylenol too. That comforted her and off we went again.

We didn't pull into the Villano's house until 11:30pm!! That was NINE hours of almost pure hell while driving! We quickly relayed the evenings events and Heather suggested Cade take some Motrin. So we did that and the fever came down almost immediately. I was so relieved! I feed Dylan again and she was better this time but ended up spitting up all over me. I went upstairs to get cleaned up and noticed I had started breaking out in hives. I think it was all stress related.

That night the motrin wore off and his fever went up to 103.5 degrees. Again we gave him more medicine. The next day we put Cade down for his nap and this time when we checked him the fever had gone up to 104.5! I was definitely freaked. So off we went to the Urgent Care clinic there in Davidson, NC. They saw him and said his ears looked fine but that he was obviously fighting something off. So they gave us azythromax just to be on the safe side. The doctor mentioned Cade might have allergies as well especially with the coughing attack he had when going through the smoke.

That day the Villano's had their "every Friday" block party at their house. Through the night, Doyle and I would take turns going upstairs to check on Cade. His fever always returned once the medicine wore off, whether it was Tylenol or Motrin. It always came back. So it was a pretty stressful weekend so far.

The next morning I got up with our two kids and Connor and Katarina (the Hildebrandt's kids). Doyle came down awhile later only to find it was still just me and the kids. Well, at that exact moment, Dylan decides to start filling up her diaper. On the 2nd big blow, I start to feel something between MY cheeks and I'm not talking about the ones on my face! I was laid back on the couch in the kids playroom and had Dylan on my chest. After feeling something I put my hand on her back and look at it only to see a ton of yellow poo!! So I start freaking out knowing it must be all over the couch and I tell Doyle to come take her. He's all like "calm down, it's fine". And I was like "no it isn't, poo is getting all over this couch!!!". So he once he takes her from me, I stand up and show him there literally is poo all over the couch!!! She had pooped and it ran between my legs and then between my butt cheeks!! Talk about disgusting! We both go upstairs and while Doyle is cleaning her up I had to take a shower because there was no way I was going to get clean without it! At this point, I am so disgusted and ticked off... could this vacation get any worse? I thought it was bad enough having to take Cade to Urgent Care when we were visiting friends, but then to come back and get poo all over their couch??!! Unreal!!!

This was the day the guys really wanted to take the boat out on the lake. So Heather and EJ, who also was running a slight fever off and an that weekend, stayed back with me and both kids while the others went boating. I got to enjoy myself while Cade took a nap. Of course when he woke up the fever was back. It was hard to really have fun and let loose when you have a sick kid that you don't know what is wrong with. And it was that way for the rest of the time we were there.

We drove home Sunday and the ride wasn't too bad at all. Except we had charged the DVD player but failed to notice it was turned ON, so the battery was drained by the time we went to leave. I had a few Yo Gabba Gabba's saved to my laptop so that kept him content for a little while anyway. We stopped once to eat and one other time to get drinks. It still took us 7 1/2 hours to make it home. That included picking up the dog from the kennel and a few rain storms here and there.

Since we've been home, Cade's temperature has dropped dramatically. I gave him some medicine yesterday and a little bit this morning. So far his fever hasn't returned! He's coughing something terrible though and having diarrhea every couple of hours or so. Speaking of which, it sounds like it's going on right now. Doyle went to work today around noon. So I'm just hoping Cade gets whatever this is out of his system so he can possibly go to daycare tomorrow. As long as he isn't having anymore fevers he should be good to go. He's acting like his normal self right now even with the diarrhea. So that's good.

I did take a few pictures of the kids when Cade was feeling better - between the fever spikes. I'll try and get them posted on here soon. I certainly hope you all had a better holiday weekend than we did! Not to say it wasn't great seeing our friends because it was, but it certainly put a damper on things having Cade sick the entire weekend.

One good thing that came out of this weekend was that I'm still the best drummer the group has when playing Rock Band!! :)