Part 3

Denial is such a funny thing. Of course once we'd heard that Penny might, maybe, have Kawasaki disease, we went into google overdrive looking up all kinds of stuff. Between that and the only slightly elevated sed-rate I mentioned last time, we were actually sort of reassurred that she probably didn't have it. She didn't look as bad as the pictures of the kids on the websites we saw. The rash was almost completely faded from what it had been. Her eyes weren't bloodshot. Her blood levels should be higher.
We'd scheduled a 230 appointment with Dr. Dawson to talk about the rest of the blood results which should have been back by then. I brought Penny to campus and let her watch cartoons on my laptop while I worked on my desk computer. When we got here I checked my phone and noticed I'd missed a call from the doctor's office. The voicemail was Dr. Dawson calling to check on Penny to see how she was. I called back and left a message to say I thought she was doing much better. Her fever didn't seem as high as it had been. I really thought it was going away. The phone rang a little while later and when I saw that it was Dr. Dawson I assumed she was just calling me back. So I was a bit disoriented when she started talking about Penny's bloodwork. In my head I was like, "wait, y'all called yesterday to say that was fine, and you just called an hour ago to check on her just to see how she was doing." Through my confusion, she was explaining that Penny's CRP level was "quite elevated" (the same words the hospital folks used when they talked about her blood work). I later found out that "elevated" means 3. Her levels were 60. Dr. Dawson said that she was going to schedule Penny for an echocardiogram in Montgomery for that afternoon, but that she also had a call in to the infection specialists in Birmingham and she was waiting for them to get back to her. After we got off the phone, I called Tray to tell him. We knew if the echo had shown anything that we'd be on the way to Birmingham anyway, so we decided to be ready to be away from home for a day or two. I gathered Penny and our things and hustled her out the door. On the way home she asked to stop by and see Maw-maw. I didn't know when the echo would be scheduled for and it was only about 11 a.m. then so I figured why not. I could wait for the doctor to call there as well as I could at home. I called Tray and told him what we were doing. He was cool with it since he was getting the chickens and dogs set up for us being gone. While we were there Dr. Dawson called and said they had scheduled us an appointment for 1 p.m. in Montgomery. It was 1130! It takes an hour to get there. I was completely frazzled and concerned that they wanted us there so quickly. She said it didn't matter if we were late, they would be waiting on us. That scared me more than anything. Penny and I bolted our lunch with Maw-maw and I flew back to the house to pick up Tray. Before I got to the driveway, my phone was ringing again. It was Dr. Dawson saying they'd had more blood results back and some of her other liver values were elevated as well. She'd talked to the specialists in Birmingham and they wanted to go ahead and initiate Kawasaki treatment in the hospital and just forgo the echo in Montgomery. I actually spent several minutes on the phone with Dr. Dawson sitting in the car in my driveway. She said she could try to find us a place in Montgomery that would offer the treatment, but Children's Hospital was knowledgeable and that's where the specialists were, plus it was a children's hospital, etc. As little as I relished driving Penny all the way to Birmingham, I decided just to go there. Dr. Dawson said ok, well, I don't think you need to go by ambulance, but they will be expecting you as soon as you get there. Even though she was saying we didn't need one, even the mention of an ambulance scared me. I met Tray coming out the front door and told him that everything had changed and explained the situation. Tray had already packed for us for the most part, but we went into overdrive gathering anything we might need for several nights. Dr. Dawson called back to say we were all set up with the pre-admission at the hospital and to go ahead and head out, so we did. We stopped and bought Penny a milk shake on the way out of town to make things up to her. She did not want to be in the car, and it was nap time, which meant she wasn't going to get a nap that day.