The drive to the children's hospital on Tuesday was long and fairly quiet. Punky napped most of the way while her dad drove and fiddled with the radio. Lost in my own world, I stared out the window and thought of all the horrible things we could hear from the doctors.
It was a two hour drive but we gave ourselves three just in case. It turned out to be a good idea. We got lost and took a twenty minute jaunt around the city. By the time we found the parking garage, navigated our way into the hospital and to the suite we needed, and signed all the new patient paperwork, the nurse called us back to get Punky's height, weight, and temperature. Ninety-nine on the nose. No fever whatsoever. No fever at all since the middle of August.
I was so thankful we weren't left in the waiting room for very long. The sights in a children's hospital are simply heartbreaking and I had a hard time coping. None of those kids deserve to be there. Looking at their innocent faces, I felt more anger than sadness. The physical pain they have to endure, the emotional roller coaster their parents experience, the fact that we may be walking down the same road ourselves. All of it makes me angry.
While I filled out all the paperwork, Punky played at an activity table with a little girl. She was maybe six or seven I'd say, and her mother kept her within reach at all times. She wore thick glasses, braces on her legs, and a neon green and purple helmet covered in flower stickers. Her mother seemed anxious that Punky was getting so close and attempting to interact with her. In a low, stern voice, she kept telling her daughter to be nice and it was making me a bit nervous.
The whole episode lasted about two minutes before Punky moved on to another toy, and I held my breath the entire time. I braced myself for the questions that would surely come. "Mommy, why won't that girl talk to me? Mommy, why does she have a helmet on her head? Mommy, what are those metal things on her legs?" My mind scrambled to find the right choice of words just in case, but I'm glad I didn't need them. If Punky noticed anything different about the little girl, she didn't verbalize it.
Anyway, we met with two doctors during our visit. The first to hear our story was a young Christian Slater look-alike with a Czech accent and musky cologne. Punky warmed to him right away once he handed over his stethoscope for her amusement. We went through all the fever episodes one by one, and he'd interrupt every seven seconds or so with a question. In a college student scribbling notes sort of way, he wrote down every word we said in blue marker on a loose-leaf sheet of paper. He had arrows going every which direction and he flipped the paper from front to back over and over again while trying to squeeze more facts into the proper timeline.
When he finished his art project, he gave Punky a quick physical exam and excused himself to discuss our case with another doctor. Fifteen minutes later he returned with an even younger colleague to review their findings. The second doctor bore an uncanny resemblance to Soleil Moon Frye in her teenage, post Punky Brewster days. Her long, brunette ponytail swayed back and forth as she danced around energetically in an attempt to make my Punky love and trust her.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I wasn't comforted one bit by their youthful, seemingly inexperienced, appearances. In that moment I found myself wishing for a real doctor. Send me a guy mid-sixties or so, dressed in a suit, with white hair, bifocals, a deep raspy voice, hair on his knuckles, and no beside manner whatsoever. And how about one of those white coats that seem to indicate to, well, everyone in the world that he's a frickin' doctor, dammit.
At any rate, Soleil conducted the exact same physical exam performed just twenty minutes earlier by Dr. Slater. They chatted with Punky and asked her questions about boo-boos, and itchies, and how her tummy feels. They squeezed her joints, and checked for rashes, and pushed on her lymph nodes. They watched her run, and jump, and spin in circles. Finally they were ready to discuss their conclusions.
Where do we start? What did they discover over the last hour? What will they test for first? Whatever they had to say, I was ready to hear it. As long as it wasn't presented with glitter-filled sketches on green construction paper.
"Well," Soleil announced in a surprisingly professional tone, "We've reviewed her history, the blood work results, and performed a physical examination. We don't feel any further testing is needed at this point. Given the fact that there's been a break in the fever pattern, and she is exhibiting no other signs or symptoms right now, it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. We would have to test for everything, and some tests are lengthy and expensive, so until the fevers return or more symptoms begin to show, we prefer to wait and just watch her for a while."
That was the one thing I was not prepared to hear.
Her dad and I sat in silence for a few seconds while we tried to comprehend their decision. Then we both started firing questions in rapid succession. They had a lot more explaining to do before we accepted their train of thought. They ended up going through a list of possibilities and all the reasons why they have no reason to test her for a particular illness at this time. It took some convincing, but we finally understood their reasoning.
They sent us home with an appointment for a follow-up three months down the road, cups to collect a urine sample during the next fever episode, a lab order to have said urine processed, and our promise to take her temperature rectally next time for a more accurate reading. And the same knot in my stomach I've had since our local pediatrician first told us that something could be wrong.
"Great news!" some people have said. I think that's a stretch. I mean, I'm a tad bit comforted by the fact that these doctors didn't seem anywhere near as panicked as her pedi, and I'm a tad bit relieved that we didn't have to subject Punky to all sorts of testing, and I'm a tad bit happy that they said it could be absolutely nothing at all and she may never have a fever like that again. But, I'm still extremely worried that something could be wrong, absolutely terrified at what that something might be, and totally pissed off that we are no closer to having an answer than we were weeks ago.
As the narrowly post-pubescent doctors so delicately put it, all we can do now is watch and wait.
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