California Trip Days 5 & 6 Unexpected Illness and The Beach

Wednesday we had scheduled a rest day and were planning on going to the beach. We slept in forever, which felt so good. The day before when we were at Sea World, Lauren was acting kind of weird, nothing specific, just not herself. I kept asking her if she was feeling OK to which she always responded yes she was fine. Well when she woke up Wednesday morning the left side of her face was kind of swollen. We thought maybe she had an abscessed tooth or something but she said her mouth felt fine. All of her felt fine really, she was running around and acting fine but it was just weird that she was so swollen.

We called Mindy, who is a nurse and asked her what she thought we should do, and she recommended we take her into to a local clinic to get checked out and maybe get an antibiotic since it was obviously an infection of some kind. I went up to the front desk and asked them if they could give me a list of family doctors close by. She did a google map search and came up with four choices. The first one was called Family Medical Clinic. That sounded good to me so I called and checked to see if they took our insurance and to get directions. The lady didn't speak very good English but I didn't think that was too big a deal. After an hour of driving around and three different sets of directions, I realized it was a very big deal when we finally found the place.

Tyler and I just looked at each other and laughed, and then said, do we really want to take our child here. We decided that all we needed was a prescription. We would get in and get out. We walked in and paid our forty dollars cash, which is all the accepted and sat and waited. The finally took us back and the doctor came in to look at Lauren. We told her we were worried about the swelling in her face. She then took out (I am not kidding when I say this) a dollar store flashlight tried to turn it on, but darn it the batteries had died. She then went out and came back with the upscale version, one of those black and yellow camping flashlights that you can get at Walmart. Yeah so Tyler and I were just dying watching her do this. She shinned the flash light down Lauren's throat for 5 seconds and then said, oh yeah she has strep throat. I almost told her that her tonsils are huge already then I caught myself, and decided to just nod my head in agreement as she pulled out her prescription pad. She then took her flashlight and shinned it in Lauren's ears and pretended she could see something with her magic light and said her ears looked a little red too. She offered to fill the prescription for us there at the clinic but we both were quick to say no thanks. She told us she wanted to do a follow up visit in two days and tried to get that scheduled. We said that we would have to call them because we weren't sure what our plans were that day. Really we were both thinking, there is no way in hell we are bringing her back here. She didn't even address the problem that we brought her in for. Oh well, we got the prescription and that's all we needed. So we went to Walmart and got her filled and called it good. Lauren was feeling fine so we decided that we were still going to go for a sunset trip to the beach. I had bought a bunch of sand toys and bubbles for them to play with when we went, so I didn't want them to go to waste.

I have seen before where you can get your child's name in the sand done for you if you lose a child. I decided to so my own version of Taylor's name in the sand. I printed it up and framed it for Tyler's mom. She really liked it.

Fun family photo

Logan chasing the bubbles.

Fun picture of Lauren just enjoying the water on her feet and the breeze blowing.

My attempt of the foot picture. Logan didn't want to participate so this is the best we could come up with. I still think it is fun.

Tyler got some great sunset shots.

After we got back from the beach, the kids really wanted to go down to the pool and go swimming before bed. We had bought the kids goggles at the store earlier that day so they were excited to try them out. I love these pictures of the kids

So Thursday was supposed to be our first day at Disneyland. I gave Lauren a bath the night before and got her hair all done up in rollers so she could have pretty curly princess hair, but when she woke up Thursday morning, this is what we found.

Instead of her face getting better over night, it had gotten a lot worse. Her eye was almost swollen shut and her lips were even swollen. We started to panic a little bit, not sure what to do. I sent Tyler to the store to get some Benedryl in case maybe it was just some kind of allergy. While Tyler was gone I put in a call to her regular doctor back home and waited for them to return my call. Logan didn't like looking at her like that. He said to me, "I don't want to go to Disneyland with sissy looking like that. Everyone is going to laugh at her." I think he was really trying to be sweet and felt bad for her, but really it broke my heart to hear him say that. I felt so bad for her and wished I knew what to do. When Tyler got back we gave her the medicine but all that did was knock her out and give her a good nap. While she was sleeping the nurse called me back and I explained everything to her. She then told me that since she had already had three doses of the antibiotic and was still getting worse then she would take her back to the doctor, a different one of course. We then called our insurance company and had them recommend one to us. We were able to get her in there right away and were relieved to have found a normal doctors office with people who spoke English. The doctor there told us he wasn't totally sure what it was, just some kind of weird skin infection. He gave her a penicillin shot and two different antibiotics that were stronger than the one she already had. She had a slight fever and he told us that main thing to watch was that. He said that if her fever went up at all to take her right to the emergency room as it could be something more serious. That totally freaked me out, but I was able to keep myself under control till we got in the car and I started crying. We headed to Target across the street to fill her prescriptions and buy a thermometer. The doctor also told us no Disneyland for at least 12 hours assuming things started getting better. When we went to Target we let the kids each pick out a new toy to go back to the hotel and play with since we knew we wouldn't be doing anything fun that day. We decided to take a picture of Lauren each hour so we could tell if there was any change. We also took her temperature at the same time and were very relieved that it never went up. By the end of the day, this is how she looked. Much better than the morning.

I hate it as a parent when your kids are sick and there is nothing you can do to help them. It makes me so sad and worried to see them that way. We are just so grateful it didn't end up being something worse than it was. Lauren asked me later that day how come we were being so nice to her. I guess I need to be nicer on a daily basis. It just opens your eyes a little more when they are sick and you can't help but love them even more.
We love you Lauren!!