Antibiotics

The sniffles and cough started last weekend.  "I feel fine, just stuffy," was the report.  We started the allergy medicine, assuming the start of spring was to blame. On Wednesday she woke with a disconcerting fever of 102.5.  The pediatrician did an exam and a strep test, and diagnosed a virus.  "Keep giving her Motrin and plenty of fluids."  I wasn't convinced, but we took that route for a couple of days. When she still had a cough and a fever of 102 on Saturday morning, I took her back to the doctor's office. To add insult to injury, her blood sugar had been hovering around the 250 mark for 3 days despite aggressive corrections and temp basals.  

The practice's other doctor had pulled the Saturday shift. I elaborated on the recorded chain of events, and emphasized my concern that nothing about her condition had changed in the past three days.  My stubborn skepticism about the virus idea led to a more careful look.  "Looks like she has a little ear infection. I'll put her on an antibiotic."  She thought for a while.  "I'm going to give her one that works on ear infections but which we also give for upper respiratory infections and mild pneumonia.  Her throat is very red and her lungs don't sound great either. This medicine should take care of anything that's going on."

Observing Saturday's Dexcom graph below, you'll see an ugly pattern in the first 18 hours.  This is indicative of the previous 3 days' patterns as well.  No tactic we attempted proved to be a match for the havoc this illness was wreaking on her blood sugar.  Her first dose of antibiotic was at noon.  We did nothing different that afternoon, diabetes-wise.

Exhibit A

She spent Sunday primarily below the (admittedly inflated because we couldn't stand the constant alarming) line.  Everything was not awesome all day long, but comparing the two is like looking at two different people's dexcom receivers. 

Exhibit B

The fever was gone by mid-day Sunday and so was the lethargy of illness.

I know the medical community is increasingly wary of prescribing antibiotics, recognizing that their overuse can cause problems on both individual and global levels.  These are important concerns.  But sometimes there's an actual infection and an antibiotic is needed. Had an antibiotic been started on Wednesday, we wouldn't have spent 3 days beating our heads against the wall fighting unfightable high blood sugars. And she wouldn't have spent so much time on the couch instead of at school, or out in the spring air.

But I suppose she wouldn't have been introduced to Gilligan's Island.