Pneumonia Redux

Yup, it's happened again. Hallie was just diagnosed with pneumonia for the second time in three months. This time we did not let things get too bad because we knew what to look for: regular low grade fevers that were getting higher steadily; the cough (which came on a lot quicker this time around); a total eating and drinking strike; lethargy; shallow breathing; and the oh-so tell tale burning sensation that Hallie was feeling by her left shoulder blade.

Sharon brought her into the peds today and Hallie was satting a crappy 95. The fever was controlled with tylenol, but the very careful doctor took one look at Hallie's medical history and sent her right up for a chest xray. The left lobe, and particularly its lower section, was very occluded and looked like crap (I think that's the technical medical term). It was a bit hard to tell if this was what her lung looked like healing from the last bout of pneumonia or whether it was a new bacterial infection that had lodged in her not-quite-healed lung. But given her lack of symptoms for three months and the rapid onset of symptoms between Friday night and today, they have decided that it's most likely a new pneumonia. So as of this evening, Hallie will be back on amoxicillin (capsules dumped in apple sauce) and hopefully that will relieve her awful cough (sounds like she's hacking up a lung, which I suppose she is) and get her back on track.

And so, once more, Hallie quickly managed to gain a tremendous amount of weight (she was 33 lbs 8 ounces two weeks ago, stripped naked) and lose it again even more quickly (today, clothed and in a pull up she was 33 lbs even, so she's probably around 32.5 lbs, max, at this point). We're not so worried about her eating right now (she hasn't eaten in three days pretty much at all) as much as her drinking. Dehydration on top of pneumonia would buy us a nice bed in a shared room in CHOP really quickly. And we definitely prefer the notion of staying home.