(un)Happy Birthday to me!

Wow, I'm completely shattered! To say that yesterday may have been the worst birthday ever, is the understatement of the century. The day started fairly well with all those lovely pressies that I told you about and then got steadily worse from there on.

Firstly herself was miserable and grumpy because of a roaring temperature... at one point in the morning we recorded 39.8C. Which is not a good temperature for anybody to have! We duly stripped her down to her knickers, gave her a cool(ish) bath and pumped her full of Calpol. I phoned NHS Direct and they said that she might be coming down with a bug. So himself and I decided that we should stay away from people and not pass the bug on to anyone else... at which point himself decided to tell me that he'd organised a suprise dinner party for me and would have to call the guests and cancel. Herself continued to struggle with the temperature all day until we finally decided to take her to the A&E Department at the local hospital at 6.30pm. There they did all the usual checks, including a urine sample test, and found that she had a 'water' infection. Poor little mite! They prescribed an antibiotic and sent us home. We managed to get her to eat a little and then put her to bed. She woke up again at 11.30pm crying and complaining of back ache; she was also shivering uncontrollably and definitely in distress. I was halfway through my second phonecall to NHS Direct when she turned a strange shade of greyish blue... all the way down to her toes! The nurse on the telephone line immediately had an ambulance dispatched which took himself and herself to the A&E again, while I followed on in the car. This time the A&E doctors took some blood tests and more urine samples as they were concerned that her infection may have spread to her kidneys. After which we were referred to the Pediatrics department who further reviewed her test results. After several hours they decided that it hadn't spread to her kidneys and we could go home and continue on the course of antibiotics. We eventually left the hospital at 5.30 am this morning and were in bed shortly after 6am. After only 4 hours of sleep we had to start dealing with herself again as the temperature had returned.

To make our day even more distressing, we recieved a phonecall from my sister-in-law, just before lunchtime, informing us that himself's uncle had passed away. His employers raised their concerns with the police when he failed to report at work. The police went to his house to investigate and ended up having to force their way into the house where they found him at the bottom of the stairs. Early investigations indicate that he may have suffered a heart attack.  Himself and the rest of his family are devastated at this news as their uncle was well-loved and was always the life and soul of the party. We will miss him.

Uncle Chris and Erin - October 2006.