I think we'll stop celebrating birthdays....

Or at least stop making plans to celebrate birthdays. The first several this year haven't turned out so hot! This has absolutely nothing to do with age, in fact that's never really bothered me. It's more to do with illness...

This all started about a month ago when my parents came to town to celebrate my Dad's 70th birthday. We had a baby sitter all lined up and we were headed to enjoy a wonderful dinner at Lonesome Dove. Typhoid Lily struck and a nasty stomach virus and several days later we were all better. The NEXT weekend, we were supposed to go out with Eric's family to celebrate his birthday. That day, his mother tripped over a shrubbery while jogging, broke her wrist and had surgery to place 4 pins by 6:00pm. She is in external fixation for 6 weeks and a cast for at least a month after.

That brings us to my birthday last week. I love birthdays! If you've never read The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman, I highly recommend it. Anyway, my primary love language is gifts. This means I not only feel loved by receiving gifts but I get great satisfaction out of giving them as well. I digress... Monday when I picked Lily up from school they told me she had run a low grade (99) fever but when they checked again 45 minutes later she was back to normal. The fever cut off at her school is 100.4. I checked her several times that night and the next morning and she was normal. Tuesday afternoon they called my at 3:45 and said she was running 100.9. I scrambled to reschedule my last patient, arranged for Eric to be home with her the next day and picked her up. She was warm but not overly fussy, she ate a normal dinner and played so I figured she had a cold. The next afternoon it was up to 102 so I decided it was time to call the pediatrician since it was continuing to rise. My birthday was the next day and I got to spend it in the pediatricians office where Lily was diagnosed with strep. Can this really be happening again?!?!? Not only that, but instead of bouncing back after the first dose of antibiotics, Lily continued to run a fever of 102-103 until Sunday. GACK!! She has been one fussy, cranky, out of sorts baby. If she wasn't being held she was SCREAMING at deafening levels. I think my eardrums are still recovering. I feel like I've been to a rock concert without the benefit of enjoying an awesome band.

We still celebrated and had dinner and it all turned out okay. However, we've decided that it's in everyone's best interest if we just happen to "bump" into each other with cake and presents in hand. I don't think we can take anymore celebrating...