I am the Mother of 4 children (ages 5-7). My son, Addison who is 7, has had recurrent bouts of high fevers (104+) that come and stay for about 5-7 days and then disappear. This has been going on for about 18 months and each time we take him to the Doc he is diagnosed with a virus and NO ONE else in the family is ever affected by this 'virus'. Bloodwork (CBC) has been done (not every time) and comes back as normal. During the occurence in May, he was unable to walk down the stairs because his legs hurt and he was limping because his ankles hurt. I did not notice any swelling. Last week he had another bout of it and I mentioned the additional occurrence to the pediatrician (I was there with one of my other children). I asked again, "what could cause something like this? are we missing something?" Kind of off the cuff, she mentioned something like JRA could be a possibility IF he had swelling or joint pain and at that point I remembered the pain from the May episode and told her about it. She now wants to do additional bloodwork (SED rate) next time he has the 'fever thing'. The only symptom he complained about this last time was his stomach hurting when he coughed. Would a systematic RA behave like this (coming and going high fevers)? I had read where the fevers stay until treatment is received. If this is the case, then I can stop thinking JRA b/c he has periods with no fevers. We have a 'well child' scheduled for him Friday. I plan on talking to them about potentially seeing a Ped Rheumatoid Doc. Also, does anyone know about eyesight tests? We took him to a 'healthy kids day' and they had vision screening. He had a terrible reading from the refraction machine, but passed the eyechart test so we never thought anything about the terrible machine reading until now. Could the machine be showing deterioration that passing the eye chart wouldn't detect? Thanks, Stephanie |
