The Hernández Family: Sickness, Albano's visit & my 30th

Well, apparently it was too much to ask for a normal week back when I posted on March 11th. Actually, that week was somewhat normal, but by the 19th, it was about to get crazy again. I just looked at a calendar to get the specific dates on when everything happened so I don't forget... March 19th was a Monday and the first day of Lucas' Spring Break. Lucas had gone to bed the night before complaining of a cough and feeling a little bad but we didn't think it was serious, but by Monday morning he did not feel good. By early afternoon on Monday, I decided to take him to the doctor and sure enough he had influenza. They also tested him for strep since I had had it a few weeks earlier but that test didn't come back positive, at least not right away. So Lucas started the tamiflu that day. On Wednesday the clinic called and said that the 48 hour test came back positive for strep so Lucas needed to take antibiotics too - back to Walgreens I went. By Friday Lucas seemed a lot better and that night Zeke and I even went on a date to see the Hunger Games which was great. Saturday (it's now March 24th), Zeke and our friend Scott had planned a trip to Ikea in Chicago to get some furniture so they left super early. When Nicolas and Jonas woke up, they had burning fevers. I called the doctor and he immediately wrote Nicolas a prescription for the tamiflu but sadly Jonas is too little to take tamiflu so we could only gave him the tylenol and motrin. Back to Walgreens I went. Soon after Nicolas took his first dose of the tamiflu he threw up and then on Sunday when I tried the tamiflu again, he threw up so we decided to just stop the tamiflu. Monday was difficult but by Tuesday Lucas was definitely a lot better and Nicolas and Jonas were a lot better too. Tuesday night Matias went to bed feeling fine but at about midnight he woke up because his ear hurt and was basically up all night because of the pain. First thing Wednesday morning I took him to our pediatrician and sure enough it was an ear infection. This time it was in his right ear (the one 3 weeks prior was in his left). Since there was still some fluid in the left ear, my doctor prescribed a stronger antibiotic. On Thursday, Lucas woke up with hives and a rash all over his body - turns out he's allergic to amoxicillin. He stayed home that day from school. Thursday afternoon, Nicolas woke up early from his nap and was quite inconsolable. Somehow through the tears, he told me that his ear hurt and wanted to go to the doctor. At first I thought maybe he was trying for sympathy knowing that Matias had said his ear hurt the day before, but he kept insisting so I finally took him in an hour later and sure enough - an ear infection! Nicolas has tubes in his ears and pretty soon it started draining like crazy. Since he has the tubes, we could give him antibiotic drops instead of oral antibiotics which was nice. Thursday night in the middle of the night, Jonas spiked a high fever again so Friday morning I went back to the doctor and poor Jonas had a DOUBLE ear infection! Did you catch that? Going to the doctor three days in a row. He joked that he should give me my own parking spot. :) Oh, and just so you know I went back and forth between laughing about everything happening and crying. I was so stressed, exhausted and tired from it all. But miraculously, Zeke and I stayed healthy through it all. This is just for me, but here's a chart to remember the sequence of the whole drawn out episode:

March 19th - Lucas: influenza

March 21st - Lucas: strep

March 24th - Nicolas and Jonas: influenza

March 28th - Matias: ear infection

March 29th - Lucas: allergic reaction to amoxicillin, Nicolas: ear infection

March 30th - Jonas: double ear infection

On a more positive note, our friends the Albano's came to visit and I turned 30! Here are some pictures!