how many illnesses can one kid get in one month...(LONG)

 Rowan seems to be determined to catch ever childhood disease at once. Just 2 days after finishing antibiotics for an ear infection, he ended up with a very high fever last Sunday/Monday and we thought his ear infection wasn't over with, so he started an additional 5 days of antibiotics. Other than the fever and a lack of appetite, he acted like he felt mostly fine (he did have a very slight cough and runny nose). Tuesday night the fever broke and he seemed a lot better, except he still had no appetite. We kept feeding him what little he would eat as often as we could, and even resorted to giving him milk or apple juice mixed with water using a medicine syringe. Thursday morning he woke up and I opened his jammies to change him, and he was covered in a rash. Turns out, he had Roseola. The rash is a sign that he is on the mend, so we stopped the antibiotics (since they're useless for a virus anyway) and headed out of town to go help my parents for a few days because my dad had back surgery. His appetite slowly improved and Saturday he was actually eating pretty good. We went to lunch with some family members Saturday, and he was unusually sleepy, just snoozed in his car seat the whole time. Got him home, took his temp and it was 103.8.  The cough and runny nose got dramatically worse and his appetite disappeared again. 
Took him to the doc Monday, now he has RSV and his ears are infected again. His O2 sats looked good, so they said all we could really do would be keep an eye on him, and they started him on a stronger antibiotic for his ears and referred us to an ENT (since this is infection number 5). Today he was sounding more wheezy/labored and he spiked a fever of 103.7 around 4am, so I took him back and they did a chest X-ray. He had an area in his lower right lung that looked like it could possibly be the very beginning of pneumonia, so they switched him to a much stronger, injected antibiotic which should take care of the ear infection AND the possible pneumonia. I'll have to take him back for a shot again tomorrow and Thursday.
Whew.
So far though, other than waking more frequently at night and taking a lot more naps, he is, as usual, very happy and not complaining. Sometimes it's hard with him to notice how bad he feels because of his good disposition. I don't even mind the waking at night since he will actually eat when he wakes at night, whereas getting him to eat during the day has been quite a battle. Today his appetite actually seemed a bit better though. 
I've now missed 7 days of work between staying home with him and going to help out my parents, and I probably won't get back to wor****il this Friday or possibly as late as Monday, so hopefully I can get FMLA and use my sick leave, otherwise this will have used up just about all of my vacation time, and we're hoping to take Rowan to finally meet his great grandparents at the end of April. Hopefully by then he'll be done catching every childhood disease known to man! 

My God! Poor little man. Lock him in the house with you and get that little man well!! to you and Rowan!

Oh man... I hope he feels better soon...

poor guy....and poor mama.  I''ll be praying things get better soon!

Oh no, poor little guy. I hope he gets to feeling better soon and stops getting all these sicknesses.

It has just begun .. !!

Plus, this cold / flu season is the worst I have ever experienced. My 5 year old and I have passed one illness from another back and forth since October! This is his first year in public school. Everyone keeps telling me that while he's buidling great immunities to common illness, it will most likely make it's way through the house. Nice!

Hope you guys get to feeling better soon!

Cathie