Thursday, February 26, 2009

Thermometers and the Related Fever

At the hospital, they sent us home with a simple electronic thermometer. And some sort of expectation that you'd be taking your baby's temp every 2 hours or something to make sure no fevers ever occurred. For the first six weeks, you live in fear of a fever because any real fever at that age results in a... FULL SEPSIS WORK-UP. Wow! What the heck is that? Answer: Blood, urine, SPINAL FLUID. Yes, spinal fluid. So you REALLY don't want your baby to get a fever. And I thought, if he DOES get a fever, I want to know right away. So I bought one of those $40 ear thermometers.

Here's the conversation I had with the nurse the first time the Little Man had a fever (luckily outside of the full-sepsis-workup age range):

Me: "My son has a fever"

Nurse: "How high?"

Me: "103"

Nurse: "How'd you take that temperature?"

Me: "With my fancy $40 ear thermometer"

Nurse: "Take it anally and call me back"

Me: "D'Oh!"

Because of course, you can't take a squirmy baby's temp while on the phone, so you have to hang up, take the clothes off, take the diaper off, figure out the cheap-o thermometer they gave you at the hospital, take the temp, then call back, wait on hold, explain the whole situation to a new nurse, and THEN get a same-day appointment.

The moral of this story is obvious: Save your money. Use the cheap-o hospital thermometer. We're still using it today, and the Little Man is nearly a year and half old.