Go Big AND Go Home - Connor Pops a 105!

Our house has been super lucky when it comes to illness these last several years. I don't think either child had a sick visit to the pediatrician last year, and it might've been for the past two or three years. Connor had the year where he broke himself regularly, but sickness doesn't seem  to come to us - and when it does, it's more of a one-day, under-the-weather thing with not much of a fever or other symptoms.

Which is why it was a bit surprising when Connor woke up a little under the weather on Tuesday. By the time I met him for an after-school activity he's starting, he looked awful. We left about five minutes after I got there, and when I got home, I decided to check his temperature with my new, fancy thermometer that I received from Braun last week. It's the Braun NTF3000 No Touch plus Forehead Thermometer.

105.

That's good enough to score a red light in the thermometer's indicator, and good enough for me to leave a panicked missive for the pediatrician on the answering machine (though I wasn't quite sure if I should leave it on the emergency answering machine or the non-emergency answering machine).

The nurse called back pretty quickly and advised a lukewarm bath to go along with the Tylenol I'd already given Connor - and told me to get the fever down as fast as possible, and that I should come in at 6:30 to be seen by the nurse practitioner. She also mentioned that the nurse does not need to see the fever in order to believe Connor had it, which echoed advice my brother-in-law has given me. He's an ER doc and regularly, parents come in with children with super high fevers, and the parents have given their kids no meds because they want the doctor to see the fever. Not good.

The fever responded pretty instantly and we ended up not going to see the nurse practitioner until the following day when Connor just could not keep his temp below 103 (which is still good enough for the red light indicator on my fancy thermometer).

Eventually, the fever made its way down to a yellow light, where it settled for about 24 hours and then finally, on Halloween, Connor was back in business. Even Helen chirped a little "woohoo" when she saw the thermometer measure "green".

I'm not required to write about the thermometer, but it is pretty awesome. I can take Connor's temperature without touching him, and I can turn the sounds off so there is almost no chance I will wake him when I take his temperature before I go to bed at night or in the middle of the night. It measured within 0.2 degrees of what the doctor's office ear thermometer measured when we went in to see the nurse practitioner.

I tried to convince Connor that the thermometer was a high-tech brain sucking machine, but he was unconvinced. I guess even though he was hot, he hadn't quite reached delirium.

Elaine