K's fever continued unchanged all week, worrying me no end until Friday, it magically got lower and we able to get her temperature down to normal with ibuprofen. She still has the cough that developed towards the middle of the week and needs a daily nap, but is definitely getting better. Whew.

She does have another UTI, which we found out about only because we called the doctor on Thursday. She's on a new antibiotic that she's only been on once before and loved, because it tastes good, is once a day and gave us a full three weeks before the next UTI, which is quite a record these days. So yay for that. Pretty much everything else about our interactions with the medical community has me livid though. Reasons include, in no particular order:

1. The fact that her pediatrician doesn't use the strips for dipping into urine and immediately seeing if there's an infection. No, we have to wait for the urine to get sent to the lab, which takes a minimum of three days and nothing gets prescribed if she doesn't have a fever or is in pain. It does mean, however, that the infection gets to party on in her bladder for another three days before we do anything about it.
2. Every single doctor that has said, "She should be on daily antibiotics," yet not actually prescribed them. I absolutely agree. She should be on daily antibiotics, especially if it's what the urologist thinks it is. At our last urologist visit, the nurse practitioner we were seeing noted that the urologist had written orders for daily antibiotics in K's chart, but they didn't have a phone number for a pharmacy. And yet she didn't give me the daily prescription the urologist clearly thought K should have. Everyone seems to be in agreement on the daily antibiotics issue. And yet here I stand, my hand completely full of no prescriptions. WHY CAN'T SOMEONE JUST GIVE THEM TO US ALREADY?
3. I have a special hate-on for the nurse practitioner, who gave us the antibiotic I told her over and over doesn't work, even if the lab report says the bacteria they found can be killed by it and then failed to call us back after two days of us calling repeatedly to say that it wasn't working and K was in pain. I can put up with a certain amount of distraction, and an office where I have to wait for two hours just to check in. But my child in pain is unacceptable.

*****

We spent a quiet and sleepy Father's Day. B doesn't care about it too much, which has been good for me since I haven't been up to doing much the past three years. But this year I pulled it together to at least help K get him a gift and have a low-key sort of celebration. I've made it that far at least. I'm not at the point yet where I can participate in Facebook memes or post happy reminiscences about my father, but I'm not in the mood to talk about how much I miss him. Just a sort of carefully neutral fatherless Father's Day.