On Sunday, November 15th, Laiklie woke up with a fever. She had complained the day before about a sore throat so I thought maybe we had strep. It didn't look like strep to me, but I decided we better get it checked anyway. So right after sacrament meeting I left and ran her to Urgent Care. The doctor agreed that it didn't look like strep and suggested a mono test. I hadn't even thought about mono. After they did the blood work to test for mono Laiklie tells me that every morning at school her and her friends share a pop. ugh! The test came back positive and he sent us home with an oral steroid. He told us to watch for strep on top of it because that sometimes happens.
By Wednesday Laiklie was getting worse, not better so I ran her into our regular doctor to check for strep. That test was negative, thank goodness, but he could see the mono was bad, bad so he decided to do a steroid treatment through IV. They decided after the first IV treatment to leave the port in her arm and have her come back in the morning to possibly do a 2nd round. The next morning we headed back in and they were hoping for a major change, but actually saw no improvement what so ever. The fever had even spiked again. :( They ended up doing the 2nd round and leaving the port in AGAIN to have us come back the next day for a 3rd round. Friday morning (the last day of finals for the trimester of course!) we headed back in. This time they could see some improvement but went ahead and did the 3rd round of steroids'. It took FOREVER because the port had been in her arm for 3 days by now and didn't take the fluid very quickly. She missed her last final for the tri, but we were able to figure it out with the teacher. We were just glad to see some improvement. They finally took the port out and sent her home on another oral steroid to continue fighting it. After a very long week she was finally feeling better.
This picture of her throat was taken the very first day right after we found out she had mono. That was the best her throat looked. It got so swollen and tight that she couldn't even swallow her own spit and would have to carry around a garbage can to spit in. She couldn't eat anything either. One blessing with the IV is that each morning they would give her some pain meds along with the steroids and as soon as they would kick in she'd eat as much as she could while it didn't hurt. It was such a blessing that she was able to eat some each day without pain for just a little while.
Laiklie was a trooper. She is so tough and even through she was slightly dehydrated and her veins were not cooperative she didn't even flinch getting the IV. I'm so glad to have her feeling better!
