The medicine isn't working

[mightymulhern]

So Syd has been having a problem in an uncomfortable place. She was telling us that it hurt when she peed and after it was clearly not getting better, Meghan took her to the doctor on Saturday. We suspect that she has a urinary tract infection which is apparently rare in kids under 7 (or maybe it was 6 or 8...). I digress. She's been on an antibiotic since roughly noon Saturday.

Tonight, Sydney started doing her dance and I asked if she had to go potty. She said yes so we went. Fast forward to upstairs in the bathroom. She's on the potty. I'm sitting on the side of the tub waiting for her to finish. Here's our conversation:

Sydney in a very serious conversational tone:
Dad, it still hurts when I pee. It hurt when I peed at school today too. The medicine isn't working.

Me:
Ok. The doctor was going to look at your pee to see what was wrong with you but that takes a few days. He gave you this medicine hoping it would work. This kind of medicine doesn't work on everything though so maybe we need to try a different one. When we're done here, we'll tell mom it's not working, and she can call the doctor to ask him in the morning.

*pause*

Did you already talk to mom about this?

Sydney:
No. *shakes head*


So we go back down stairs and I relay this message to Meghan somewhat amazed that Sydney would point out to me that it hurt to pee at multiple times during the day and tell me that the medicine isn't working. I was disappointed to find out that they had already discussed it. In the earlier conversation, Meghan asked her if it hurt, asked her if it hurt earlier in the day, and explained that the medicine might not be working.


I will say that Sydney is taking her medicine very nicely lately. It's been a complete non-event unlike prior times where we've had to hold her down or negotiate through much procrastination to get her to take it.











maybe this medicine isn't working.

[mightymulhern]

Ok, this is bad. Email from Meghan:


From: Mulhern, Meghan G
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2011 4:01 PM
To: Mike Mulhern
Subject: Doctor called back

She has an extremely resistant strain of E. coli. They have no idea how she got this. He rattled off the list of drugs it was resistant to, and it’s practically every antibiotic I have heard of. It showed some susceptibility to cephalexin, so we are going to try that and if it doesn’t work, she will need IV antibiotics. Crazy!

[Meghan]

Sydney has been on the cephalexin since Tuesday evening and is now reporting that it no longer hurts when she pees. Whew! Looks like this is going to work. Unfortunately, the medicine tastes terrible and it is orange flavored, which is Sydney's least favorite flavor. We mix it with chocolate syrup but it's still a challenge to get it in her. Luckily, she only needs to take it for 7 days.

We have a follow-up visit with our doctor next week. Once they are sure she is free of infection, they will do a full workup on her kidneys to make sure this isn't due to some anatomical problem. I asked what a "full workup" entailed. They will do an ultrasound of her kidneys (no big deal) and then they will fill her bladder with a radio dye and x-ray it (big deal). I am not looking forward to this. I told the doctor that I'd rather wait and see if this happens again. I don't see the point in putting her through this if this is just a fluke. But the doctor is insistent that we do it.