Thanks for the reply, rgaild. I'm sure that he probably is just taking longer to fight something off. It always seems like it's something with him! Last year when we were dealing with the huge lymph node, the biopsy had to be put on hold because at his pre-surgery physical his PTT was extremely prolonged. They thought it was an error and repeated it, only for it to come back even worse, so the surgery was cancelled and we were sent to a hematologist at Children's. After WEEKS of going back and forth and doing tons of bloodwork they never figured out why, and the hematologist gave the okay for the surgery to remove the node. (By this point it was over two inches big in the side of his neck...and causing ear pain by pressing on blood vessels.) He ended up developing a baseball sized hematoma at the surgery site that took a couple of weeks to go away. Thankfully though, the results were benign and we moved on. Then a couple of months later in preschool during a hearing test it was discovered that he had moderate hearing loss and had tons of thick fluid build up in both middle ears, so about 4 months ago he had tubes placed in his ears.
This whole fever thing now has just been a little strange. I'm almost wondering if it has something to do with the vaccines he had just before kindergarten started. Mid/late-august he had his kindergarten physical and everything looked great and he recieved a couple of vaccines. The next morning he woke up with his whole shoulder extremely swollen and hot to the touch. It was white and rock hard with a huge red ring around the whole shoulder and upper arm. I called the dr's office and they said it was just a reaction and to keep an eye on it and ice it. In two days, it was gone. About a week after his vaccines though, he woke up during the night screaming that his legs hurt. My younger son has had growing pain issues so I assumed that's what was going on with him and just comforted him back to sleep. In the morning though, he woke up in terrible pain and literally could not walk. I had to carry him to the bathroom. I gave him motrin and had him soak in a warm bath and it seemed to get much better. That day I sent him to afternoon kindergarten (it was only like the 4th day of school!) and he was still limping a bit but seemed fine. I figured he'd pulled a muscle playing at the park the day before or something. When i picked him up from school he was obviously not feeling well. Within an hour of getting home he started running a fever and again couldn't walk. His legs hurt and one arm hurt. I run an in-home daycare, and he was in so much pain that I almost called someone to come and stay with all of the kids for me to take him to the E.R., but instead gave him more motrin and it finally started to help. My sister mentioned that she thought some vaccines could cause these sort of symptoms.
The next morning, again, he woke up screaming in pain and unable to walk and running a fever. I gave him tylenol and then took him to the dr at the walk-in office. When we were finally seen, he no longer had a fever, but was still having a tough time walking. The dr. said he thought it was just a case where he had over-used his muscles playing on the playground or running or something, and to give motrin/tylenol and ice and heating pads. The horrible leg pains continued for the whole week off and on with the fever. I brought him back into the dr and said I really didn't think strained muscles would also be causing fevers, and mentioned the vaccine reaction. He said no, that couldn't be it because only the MMR vaccine rarely causes something like that, but he had not recieved the mmr since he was a toddler. He said that it must be a virus that was causing the fever and pain in his joints. He prescribed prescription strength motrin for him, and just said to keep an eye on him. Long story short the fevers and pain have come and gone since then and he has repeatedly missed school. The day that his dr finally drew blood I brought him in with a fever and refusing to bear weight on one of his legs. That's when he ordered the CBC along with leg xrays (came back normal) and urine (also normal.) He was thinking arthiritis, but his ESR came back pretty normal (I think it was 16?) and the cbc pretty normal too so he prescribed antibiotics to hopefully take care of whatever is going on.
Here we are, he's finished the 10 days of antibiotics and still having the fever issues, but the pain in his legs has seemed to get better, although he is still walking around a little stiff-legged and won't run. Last night he woke up crying about one of his arms hurting and his tummy hurting and was running a fever. Now he's still asleep, and I'm trying to decide if I take him back into the dr? Or just wait it out until friday when we go in to repeat the cbc? I feel like he's missing so much school, and we're only 1 month into it! I had his parent teacher conference last friday, and his teacher just said that the days he has been in school, he's been moody and obviously not feeling well.
Anyways... that's what's been going on for the past month. Honestly, I was worried that his blood test was going to come back showing something bad, so I was extremely relieved when it was pretty much normal but I wanted to understand what the low lymphocytes meant. I guess that if he really continues to feel so poorly, I will ask about the anti-viral meds.
