The Trouble with Teeth

We weathered the storm and hopefully it is over for now!

Over the last week Ethan has not been himself. It started Tuesday AM when he spiked a temp of 103 for Grandma Huffey, sending her at 3AM to Walgreens to get Motrin to help bring his temp down and then that continued off and on over the following days. Tuesday evening, when the temp spiked again to 103 with Tylenol and Motrin on board, I got worried and we went to the walk-in clinic in Urbandale. Ethan had been working on cutting his molars and the right bottom one was looking pretty ugly in comparison to any other teeth I have seen come in before. It was purple/red in color, swollen about twice the size of his normal gums and smelled of rotten meat due to the amount of blood that was coming from it.

The doctor that looked in his mouth made the comment that in his 34 years of practice, he had never seen anything like that before (not too comforting). Good news was that his ears were great, no infection.

So the testing began. Ethan's temp in the office was 102 and they wanted to check his CBC to see what his white count was doing. It was elevated slightly so they decided to put him on antibiotics.

The next day, and that following afternoon, things continued to be bad. His temp stayed around 102 with Tylenol and Motrin alternating every 3 hours and he was one unhappy baby not wanting to play or be held... he was not feeling well at all. I called Dr. Z and he increased his antibiotic dose due to the fever not decreasing and we were to follow up if things didn't get better.

The next day the tooth looked better but the temp reached 104 in the night so we made an appointment with Dr. Z to see what else we should do. Dr. Z checked him out and decided that due to his white count still being elevated, we should have a blood culture and chest xray as well as a urine analysis done to make sure he didn't have a secondary infection that we were overlooking (his ears still were great). So Ethan had his first trip to Blank Hospital and his first xray, venous blood draw, and a wee bag placement. Poor little guy, I felt so bad for him. Daddy came along to help and went in with him for the xray and we sat in the radiology department waiting room, his bear butt exposed, waiting for him to pee in the bag so we could check his urine. Finally he went.

He was such a tough little guy, and after all that, everything was normal. Friday we went to the dentist (just stopped in and had a quick chat and look at the tooth) just to make sure that everything looked okay. The dentist pointed out that Ethan had a molar on the top left that had come through, the one on the bottom right was looking okay and the one on the bottom left was going to break through any day (it was huge and swollen too... about the size of a black bean). He said that with all these teeth coming through that it would be possible that his temp would go up, but it is not the cause of the 104 temp, he probably had something else going on too. He called the ugly purple/red, bloody, swollen thing an eruption cyst and said although it is not common, it is not abnormal.

So things have been better, he is in the middle of the course of antibiotics and the fevers have stayed down. He is back to his cheery, lovable, talkative, self, and is getting into EVERYTHING again like normal!

I read a book when I was pregnant that said that it is a coincidence that a child has symptoms when they are teething, it is not related, and they do not experience much pain. I have moved that book the the fiction section in our bookcase! That person must have never had children! LOL.