Monday night was not fun. Charlotte went to bed, grudgingly, around 9pm. It was a little later than usual, but not that bad. Around 10:30, she woke up, and my husband comforted her and put her back to sleep. Around 11 or 11:30, she woke up again, and this time he gave her some ibuprofin because she seemed to be running a fever. He tried rocking her, and just as she was calming down again, she all of a sudden stiffened up and screamed bloody murder, like she was in massive pain. She told him that her eyes hurt (a headache maybe?).
He brought her into our room, and I (wide awake at this point), tried comforting her for a while. She was fine for a while, and then, out of nowhwere, started screaming bloody murder again. She was hard to comfort, and had a long list of demands--go to the potty, take a bath (which was indulged for a brief time between screaming sessions), ice (wrapped in a washcloth, which she heled to her neck and shoulders), etc.
The screaming was intermittent--would last a couple of minutes at a time, and didn't seem to have any external trigger that we could find. Best of all, thanks to her wonderfully improved vocabulary, she kept telling us she was being bitten by snakes. In fact, at some points shadows would seem to scare her (as did the sight of her changing pad on her dresser, orperhaps the diaper that was sitting next to it?) She didn't want to be put down, kept changing which parent she wanted.
About an hour after the ibuprofin, we checked her temperature and she was still at about 101. At this point we called our pediatrician's exchange number, and ended up talking to a nurse. The nurse didn't think it sounded like we needed to bring her to a hospital (she wasn't inconsolable for an hour straight or more), but recommended we keep her head elevated in case her ears hurt (laying flat is murder on an earache), and call the doctor in the morning. By 12:30-1am, the screaming/hallucination fits seemed to mostly end. I ended up propping myself up with pillows and holding her on my chest. Somewhere around 3 or 4, she was sound asleep enough and already laying flat enough (she kept sqirming into more comfortable positions), that I was able to let her sleep on a pillow next to me, and I could lay down and actually rest. Her fever had broken by then, and though occaisionally she would warm up a little, she didn't need any more medicine.
Apparently hallucinations with fever isn't that unusual, as the ped wasn't particularly worried. She did have a sore throat and swollen glands (which I'd already guessed since Charlotte barely touched the sweet rasberry/chocolate coffee cake for breakfast), but does not have strep. The lucky kid could also get her last vaccination (due at 2 years, but her 2 year appointment was a month too early), so she got a shot. Apparently the sore throat wasn't bothering her that much by the time of the dr appointment (basically lunch time), because she was requesting to "eat" and asking for "taco". In fact, we successfully distracted her with talking about tacos while she was getting the shot, so she barely registered the needle (she did like the ducky band-aid, though, and kept lifting her pant leg in the car to look at her "boo-boo").
What a strange day that began with a possessed toddler screaming about snakes, and ended up with a trip to Taco Bell....
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