Please, Please, Please

We are on day 3 of fever watch 2011!  I'm trying to think positive.  I'm being glib, but I'm actually terrified inside.  It had been over a year since Annabelle had one of her fevers.  We had the non-stop ear infections from December to March but at least we knew what it was.  There was a diagnosis, treatment, medications.  I can live with that because it has a name.  I can say she has an ear infection, sinus infection, etc. 

No one else can understand how hard it is to know that your child is sick but they don't know what is wrong with her.  Even after all the tests, they never could give me an answer.  Why every three to four weeks would she get soaring temperatures, 102 sometimes reaching as high as 106?  The helplessness that a parent feels when there is nothing you can do is awful.  The absolute worst.  I had just learned to breathe normally again.  I stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Last night at 4:30am Annabelle called me.  She had to go to the bathroom.  She is only 5 and scared of the dark , so that wasn't the big deal.  The big deal, the thing that has made me afraid again after so long, is that she was too weak to walk.  Her head hurt, she was dizzy.  I had to hold her on the potty, wipe her.  Things I haven't done in a very long time.  She thought she might have to "spit" and her heart beat was racing, her body shaking uncontrollably.  When I took her temp, it was 103.2.  Too high! 

I worry about what all that heat is doing to her little brain.  The anxiety that this causes me is off the charts.  I've spent so much time trying to figure this out with no results.  Doctors told me it was an immature immune system, that she would grow out of it.  And after a whole year without a fever, I thought maybe they knew what they were talking about.  But now I'm scared all over again.  Worried about what will happen next.  Will she start getting sick again?  Please, please, please, I pray that the answer is no.