Bad weekend

Yesterday morning, after a rough night with Rosie, we woke up to find that the rash on her arms had turned into a blood rash. The kind that fails the 'glass test'. The kind that is a symptom of meningitis. We phoned the weekend doctor and they came to the house. Yes, apparently house calls still happen here. The doctor took one look at Rosie and told us to get her straight to the emergency room.

Jason and Toby had gone out to get coffee but luckily they took Jason's car so mine was still parked out front. The doctor was going to call an ambulance if I couldn't get her to A&E immediately. The doc rang the hospital to tell them we were coming, wrote a note for me so we would be seen urgently and Rosie and I set off.

They soon ruled out meningitis but they did put a shunt on the back of her hand and gave her antibiotics through an IV. We were there all day and in the end they said they thought it was an allergic reaction but it might be something viral. They wrapped up her arm and sent us home with the shunt and told us to come back today.

We had another rough night with lots of fever and coughing and went back to the hospital. They looked at Rosie again and the rash looks less angry today. They gave her some more antibiotics through the shunt then removed it. Rosie threw up during the removal so they kept us a bit longer to watch her. Her fever was going up again so they gave her some ibuprofen and after ten minutes sent us home.

Now we're back in the care of our GP, none the wiser about what's actually causing Rosie to be ill. I asked about allergy scratch testing but they said that NHS doesn't do that except in severe cases. This is one of those times when I would like to punch the NHS in the face. My baby has a horrible itchy blood rash that was mistaken for meningitis. If that's not severe then what is?!

I did ask if we could have the testing done privately and they said yes but we would need to be referred by our GP. We're going to have to do that. We need to find out what's making Rosie ill and soon. We also need to know if it's Indy or not. At the moment a dark cloud is hanging over Indy and I can already tell that Jason is seeing him in a more negative light. If the poor cat is innocent then he needs to be cleared.

Most of the time I love NHS but it's times like this that they drive me crazy. They've ruled out that Rosie isn't dying but they haven't worked out what's making her ill and they haven't made her better. Managing the rash is as far as they seem prepared to go and the rest is left to us to ascertain through trial and error. That is shocking to me.