Poor Brett

Last week Sunday Brett became sick; started off complaining of sore knees, and by the evening had a temperature, couldn't walk or hold his drink bottle, his joints were so sore. The next day the doctor said he had a strep infection and put him on antibiotics. Monday to Wednesday the poor kid couldn't walk, go to the toilet or feed himself, he was in so much pain. Wednesday afternoon he picked up just on time for a follow up visit to the doctor who was happy with his progress - he was pretty perky when we were there, could even walk, sort of!! The rest of the week, he would be okay for a few hours and then his temp would go up again, and everything would hurt again. Every evening around 10 he would start with the shakes, up would go his temperature, and then he'd saturate the bed with sweat. Poor kid's, had a really rough go. Last night he did it again, so today I took him to see a doctor (on Sunday you can't be too choosy with what doctor you see). She assessed him and told me to take him to PMH (the children's hospital) to have some bloodwork done. So Dave and I spent the rest of the day at the hospital... the doctors were concerned he might have rheumatic fever, or Ross River Virus or.... anyway, they took his blood to run a number of tests, and checked his urine. Thankfully the initial results have all come back normal, although one test does show that he has (or had) an infection. The tests for the nasty diseases take a few days for the results, so they sent us home again, telling us to keep doping him up with panadol and nurofen while we wait for the results. They have also given us a referral to the rheumatology department for a check next week Tuesday, just to check out his sore, inflamed joints. We hope and pray that by then he will be better again!
To add to the excitement, on Thursday afternoon Travis decided to try and cut his finger off with a steak knife (he was cutting a cardboard box into some wonderful creation when the knife slipped!). Fortunately, it wasn't too bad, and took just a quick trip to the emergency department where they said it could do with just a steristrip and bandaid. It's healing nicely now!