An update on Anna

For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook, Anna started coughing Wednesday coupled with a little vomiting. On the way to school yesterday, she coughed a big cough and threw up just a little bit, so I kept her home for about an hour then took her to school late since she seemed fine after that. The school nurse called me an hour later to pick her up because she got lethargic and feelign worse, and she didn't go to school today either. Apparently, the flu and H1N1 is going around our campus and Anna had the early symptoms of H1N1.

After a very restless night and tough day, we got into the ped this afternoon. She does NOT have the flu or H1N1. Yay! Just a garden variety virus. Even if she did have either version of the flu, our ped would not give her the Tamiflu. He said that it causes an increase in the virus across the blood-brain barrier and is causing some psychotic and suidical behaviors in some children, and that would be especially possible because Anna is on Risperdal. Anna does not need to be dealing with that right now! So she would have had to suffer through the illness... thank goodness it's not the flu. Hopefully, she'll make it through this virus with no seizures. She did start running a fever last night and I was able to get Motrin in her right away. So far, so good. Except that she feels miserable, poor little pumpkin.

While we there, Anna was in full perseveration mode about getting a wheelchair. The ped fully supported mommy's position that Anna could not get a wheelchair because she didn't need one. She kept repeating herself, tried to leave the exam room (we had to bar the door), then got angry and violent (she threw her shoes at the doctor). We got an emergency referral to a child psychiatrist and OCD was mentioned. OCD? Very interesting. No one has ever mentioned this label in conjuction with Anna... her behaviors have always been attributed to autism.

I had been trying to find a child psych this last week with no luck. They either don't take our insurance or aren't seeing new patients. One guy wanted us to fill out a patient application just to get on a waiting list to be a patient, then another for an appointment after acceptance! Crazy. So this was good that the ped got to see what we've been dealing with for the last 17 days. Like I said before, you adapt quickly to a new normal and you forget just how altered your reality has become. It's disturbing to see how affected Anna is right now.