Small Blessings... in disguise

Taylor is a nail biter. She's been a nail biter since she's had a mouth full of teeth. Therefore she has no nails on her fingers or toes. She also bites her nails until she bleeds. She'll grap her cuticle and yank. We use to go through a box of bandaids for her fingers. We had to stop giving out bandaids to boo boos caused by her biting her nails.

Well one night this week, she woke up at 3 am to climb into our bed (not unusual for her). While she's gathering all her animals, she starts screaming 'ow ow ow ow.' It was so real, I had to ask what hurt and she said her finger. I turned on the light and the poor childs fingers looked like they were about to fall off. Two of her fingers were extremely infected with puss, redness, and swelling. She could barely move them and they hurt her so bad that she wouldn't let us put bandaids on them.

By seven the next morning, they were twice as bad. Adam and I took it upon ourselves to 'drain the wound'. We were safe and careful. We were able to get rid of the puss, put neosporin on it and bandage her up. She went to school. That afternoon when we got home, they were still obviously infected but much less puss. It didn't look any worse... maybe even a tad better. However, when she started running a 102 fever, I threw her in the car and took her to Doctors Care. I was so concerned about her fingers and her having some kind of major infection from them. Long story short, they took blood work at Doctor's Care. Her wbc was 22, which is twice as high as it should be. This signaled that she has some kind of infection. (Well, duh, her finger) but the doctor was adament that her finger infection wasn't 'large' enough to cause her white blood count and fever to be that high. Something else was brewing. She had a chest xray to rule out pneumonia, which was clear. She's had a cough for two weeks. She ended up getting a mega dose of Rocephin and we were to follow up the next day with her pediatrician.

Our follow up turned out better than expected. Dr. C wasn't happy about her fingers (and agreed that wasn't the cause of her fever and abnormal blood work)He seemed worried about her blood work. However when her repeat cbc came back at 11 (normal is 3-10), he felt much better. It was decreasing and her fever was gone. We went home with oral antibiotics to treat skin and respiratory infections. His theory is that she had bronchitis/early pneumonia. It was too early for it to show up on the chest xray. The Rocephin shot we received the night before (and the fact that she had fever for less than 24 hours) kicked it before it really started brewing.

Small blessings. I raced to the doctor because of a fever due to her fingers. If it hadn't been for her fingers, I would have waited, thought she had a virus (it's ALWAYS been a virus) and she might have ended up with pneumonia. I can't imagine what her wbc would have been if we waited. Scary! Especially since it was 22 after being sick for such a short amount of time. We might have ended up in the hospital.

Thank goodness for sick fingers. However, we are trying to kick that habit in the butt. The next day was hard for her but we refused to allow it and reminded all she had been through. I honestly haven't seen her bite her nails since then... though not to say she hasn't.