My almost-8-month-old son has had a low-grade fever for 10 days now. We’ve seen the pediatrician twice, both times for no reason - he has no ear infection, nothing concerning. But the low-grade fever just won’t go away. He’s happy otherwise, no real change in mood and he’s always been a giggly, easygoing baby. I just took his temperature and it was 100.7, so he’ll be home tomorrow for day 11. I’m just so frustrated and exhausted. He was waking up once a night before this, but has recently shifted to twice a night, so there’s that, and then there’s me trying to make up work in the evening/midnight hours so that I don’t leave people in the lurch and minimize my PTO. I dreamed last night that I got fired for being gone so much, so it’s definitely stressing me out.
My other son was never sick like this - if he was sick for 10 days at a time, it was for a reason, something identifiable like hand-foot-mouth disease. My younger son’s got the sniffles but other than that, nothing.
Has anyone experienced this? My pediatrician said it’s normal, but my daycare seems to think it’s highly unusual. The pediatrician said 7-10 days is expected for a viral illness (never mind that we’re going on day 11) and that the only thing to watch for is an ear infection (that’s the only thing she checked for), so we should let her know if the fever spikes or if he starts waking up a lot at night.
I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly, but if anyone has any experience with something similar, I’d be grateful for the stories/commiseration!
One of my daughters had it. The typical case starts with a fever. After a while a rash *may * appear. Then the fever starts to drop. Typically at this point the child becomes very irritable for about a day. No one knows why since this disease affects mainly children under 2 who cannot explain what’s bothering them.
Not as a baby, but my then-10-year-old had something similar last fall. He missed a bunch of school. It was frustrating because it just wouldn’t go away. It eventually did, of course. But it was at least a week of fever, if I recall correctly. And my husband was out of the country at the time so I had no help. It really sucked.
I hope he gets better soon! It is so hard to be a working parent with a sick kid.
Yeah, I’ve thought about staying home several times this past week, but only as a fantasy. I wouldn’t consider that seriously because I really do love my job, and there aren’t too many like it, but I’ve just been so tired.
MLS, I think the doctor may have had that in mind with some of the questions she asked. But my son never had a high fever at any point, only a consistent low-grade (100.4 - 100.9) fever. Though really, you’re probably right in a general sense - this probably is a viral infection that’s particularly long-lasting and just because it doesn’t have a name doesn’t mean it won’t get better eventually!
(I’m a scientist by training, so I really like to name things. And be in control, but that’s obviously completely out the window with two small boys!)
We been going through something similar with the Cub, but it’s not a fever with him - it’s a stomach bug that just won’t let go. We go on the rule that he can’t go back to school until it’s been at least 24 hours since he vomited, and we’re currently on day 5. He keeps having good days, then bad days. (I won’t go into the details. :eek: )
I’m at home with him today, and he does seem much better, so maybe tomorrow…
Yeah, teething was the first thing I thought of. My older kid once ran a low-grade fever for almost two weeks, then a tooth popped up and it went away.
Mind my asking … what thermometer, what technique, and what time of day?
Officially it’s a fever at 100.4 F/ 38 C (rectal or tympanic or temporal artery, with rectal defined as the gold standard of the three) but the reality is that the tympanic and temporal artery thermometers tend to overestimate the temperature. Also they are not perfectly reproducible taken by the same technique right after each other let alone taking into account the normal circadian variation of 0.5 C during the course of the day. And the reality that 38 C is itself just an arbitrary line in the sand.
As a society we tend to be oh just a wee bit fever-phobic but the thermometer is actually a pretty poor assessment tool. OTOH “happy otherwise, no real change in mood and he’s always been a giggly, easygoing baby” is a fantastic assessment tool. He is a well child. Get one “normal” reading and stop taking the damn temperature!
Boy would I love to stop taking his temperature! But we have to take it at least once a day - it’s what daycare goes off of, so we have to go off that too. And the fact is that he’s getting a low-grade fever by early afternoon every day, so daycare isn’t an option. (If it were just a low-grade fever in the evening, and I was really at the end of my rope, I’d just send him in, fever or no.)
Rectal thermometer, typically in the evening around 5 or 6pm. But I started getting curious just how early the fever was starting in the day, so I have taken it other times just to see - typically 99 in the morning, reaches 100.4 by early afternoon (1pm), then up higher still in the evening. Over the weekend and last night too, the evening temp has gone into “real” fever territory - 101.3 last night, which was the highest yet. Not that 101.3 is that concerning, but weird that it’s going up now, on day 11, when he really ought to be getting better.
As for teething, maybe…I do tend to blame everything on teeth :). But I don’t think teething would cause anything above 101.
You know, a fever that spikes in the evening and abates in the morning is a hallmark of mononucleosis. A lot of people get it as babies, at which age it’s such a mild illness that a lot of parents don’t even realize the child is sick. I wonder if that’s it?
Everybody responds to mono differently (way differently), but when I had it the nighttime fevers went on for about two weeks.
Sorry your kid is sick. Ten days is brutal. Make sure you take care of yourself too!
[rant]
An unfortunate fact of modern American life is the extent to which daycare protocols trump sensible medical advice.
It is very common to have a rule that a fever over 100.4 means you can’t come in. But, as DSeid points out, any single-symptom categorical rule isn’t great, and certainly not fever. Most parent I know are taking temperatures under the arm and converting, which just adds another layer of error.
And what is fever being used a heuristic for anyway in the daycare context? Contagiousness? It sure seems like a bad measure for that, since for lots of illnesses we believe people are contagious both before and after fever.
At my old daycare we had to get a doctor’s note to return to care if they measured a fever on my kid. Talk about inflating medical costs! We would go the pediatrician and they’d say “daycare note again?” and we’d say “yep.” That’ll be $700.
Surely a more sensible system would be to (1) keep kids out of care when they are sick, as measured by some combination of things rather than just fever, or if a single variable, then the general affect of the kid which is what pediatricians seem to use to judge severity of the illness; and (2) treat every kid at daycare like he is a contagious ball of germs–which he probably is–and just be very diligent about hand-washing, disinfecting toys, etc.
It varies widely, but $700 sounds completely unreasonable. We did a couple of Well Baby visits without insurance and they were $150 without shots, $400 with.
In our lovely system, the price of any given doctor’s service depends on if you insured and if so, by whom. I think my doctor charges my insurance company something on the order of $700 for a next day appointment, and they have some negotiated price of much less. I pay nothing out of pocket, which is why I don’t know the actual amount–and which is, of course, a big part of the problem.
Holy crap. Our GP charges E55, plus E10 for each extra person in the family - so if both kids have whatever, it’s E65 for the pair of them. My insurance gives me back some of that at the end of the year. Government-schedule shots are free.
Around here, the only symptoms that automatically mean you need to keep the kid home from daycare are vomiting and diarrhoea: they don’t want the kid in till 24 hours after the last episode. I’ve sent Thing 1 in with a low-grade fever a few times, as long as she was in good form and didn’t have any other symptoms; I just told the teachers and got them to keep an eye on her and ring me if she got worse. They didn’t have any problem with that.
Definitely not baby sick, he’s too cute for that :). But I’m so tired and just plain frustrated that it does make the time with him less enjoyable than it would be otherwise. Twelve days of fever is just so weird and unexplained…
The highest reimbursement I have ever seen for a simple office visit (no surgery, no labs, no shots) has been $110. And I have seen thousands. My daughter’s pediatrician gets $92 ($25 from us, $77 from Blue Cross) for a sick visit.
My little nephew got sick visiting us from China last year. Without insurance we paid $115 to the same practice my daughter goes to. This is in a state with the most expensive healthcare in the country (Massachusetts).
I can’t imagine how your doctor could get away with charging $700 for a visit. No insurer would pay that. Well maybe the executive plan some of the bigwigs at work have, but their office visits are at our corporate offices, not at the doctors’.
And indeed, while 100.7 in the evening is something most of us would say to ignore (seriously take the “required” temperature in the morning when he is 99, not when normal circadian rhythm has temperature peaking), 101.3 rectal persistently is enough to make an eyebrow arch.
If mono (and yup many have had mono as preschoolers and below and never knew, just prolonged fever, or odd rash, or swollen lymph node) there is nothing to do differently. But if that temp or higher persists then your doc might end up at least checking a CBC and urinalysis (and getting the mono while at it) just out of an abundance of caution.
I do understand the desire to have a name but allow to share an old joke that may help explain your doctor’s POV …
A bunch of doctors go duck hunting.
The first one up is the psychiatrist who merely shouts out "How long have you thought you were a duck?
Next is the surgeon who picks up a bazooka, yells “Goose!” and blows the duck out of the sky.
Then the family practice doc who fills up a musket with buckshot, yells “Bird” and hits the duck with a stray pellet.
On comes the internist: Night scope on the rifle with heatseeking bullets; “Probable duck, rule out goose, rule out pheasant, rule out acheoptyrex …” Heat seeking bullet gets it.
Finally the pediatrician. Picks up a trusty old rifle. Doesn’t say a word but tracks the duck across the sky to the horizon and with satisfaction puts the rifle down. “You never shot!” all the others shout. “Didn’t know what it was but knew if I left alone long enough it would go away on its own.”
On my statements, it shows the amount the doctor charged, the amount the insurer will pay, and the excess. The amount the insurer will pay, I gather, is the negotiated “real” price, since the doctor never seeks to collect on the excess. When I said $700, I was referring to that first number, not the insurer-negotiated figure. Further, at my practice, when we need to get in immediately (so we can get the kid back to daycare), there is an additional charge for this.
However, I was indeed conflating the number with the cost for a visit that involved more things. Looking back at the statements, it looks like a run-of-the-mill urgent visit was a mere $350, and my insurer-negotiated price was $150.
And be in control, but that’s obviously completely out the window with two small boys!)