Something About Zebras

Thursday night Rebecca came down with a fever and started complaining that her back hurts. She continued to run a low fever yesterday and continued mentioning that her back was hurting. The combination of fever and back pain had Joel and I thinking maybe she had a UTI, so we scheduled a visit to the pediatrician, for which Joel left work early and met me there.

Rebecca's urinalysis was normal, but was sent out to culture anyway just in case. Of course when Joel comes along to a doctor visit and happens to mention that he's a pediatric oncologist suddenly we found ourselves with both a nurse practitioner and a doctor in the room, and some probably unnecessary testing. So in addition to the urinalysis, which was all I was really concerned about, Rebecca got a strep test and a CBC. (She was NOT HAPPY about this).

The strep test came back negative, but the CBC came back with (if I recall correctly) abnormally low counts on all 3 of white blood cells, platelets and hemoglobin. Now it was Joel's turn to be NOT HAPPY, because instead of assuming like most sane people that she just has a virus and agreeing to bring her back in a week to have a repeat CBC, I had to talk him out of taking her straightaway to his clinic to have leukemia ruled out. I did not quite succeed in talking him out of this, because he scheduled her for first thing Monday morning to see his boss.

There's a saying in medicine something about primary care doctors are used to seeing horses all the time so when a zebra comes along once in a while, it can be hard to spot. Being a specialist, I think Joel has the opposite problem, and sees zebras everywhere he goes. Rebecca, as you can probably see from the pictures in the post below, has not been acting particularly sick anymore.