The plan was for Oma, Rudy, and I to have our own little adventure while Brady and Papa were fly fishing. Rudy wanted to go to the Baltimore aquarium and the National Zoo. We'd booked a hotel for a night in each city and everything was set...until Rudy woke up around 3:00 am Friday morning complaining of a sore throat! After a morning doctor appointment, we had confirmation of strep throat. With a dose of ibuprofen, Rudy seemed to be feeling better and we had the doctor's OK to go ahead as planned.
We left after lunch so Rudy could take a nap in the car. He slept almost the entire way to Baltimore. We checked in to the hotel, and walked to get dinner near the aquarium All still seemed well with Ru, but then he asked to go back to the hotel after less than an hour in the aquarium. We plead our case with a sympathetic manager, who was kind enough to extend our passes through Saturday. Rudy was in bed and sound asleep on Friday night by 7:30.
I slept in the same bed as he did, and I woke up early in the morning because his little body felt like a hot furnace. His temp was 103.9, which is way past my point of tolerance for fevers. He was miserable too, of course. After another dose of ibuprofen, we got it down to 101. Progress, but not enough for him to feel any less miserable. By about 9:30, he still had a fever and felt terrible; I was starting to feel a little panicked because, in our past experiences with strep, the kids always felt significantly better after a few doses.
I called on Ellen, my friend/nurse-on-call, who agreed that the fever and symptoms should break 24 hours after the first dose. We waited it out and, almost exactly 25 hours after the first dose, Rudy looked like a completely different kid. I kept him on an alternating schedule of advil and tylenol the rest of the day, but thankfully we were able to finish the trip as planned!
I think Rudy's favorite part of the aquarium was watching the dolphins. They don't do "shows," only "training sessions," which are not scheduled in advance. We caught one session Friday night, but then spent another hour or two watching them on Saturday. After spending several hours at the aquarium, we strolled over to the science museum on the inner harbor for just over an hour.
It was early evening by the time we left Baltimore and headed for DC. We were staying in Rosslyn, so had been planning to walk from the hotel to find something for dinner. Rudy was clearly starting to fade again, so we opted to stay in for what might possibly be Rudy's ideal evening: playing Life in a hotel room while eating delivery pizza and ice cream!
The next morning was an uncharacteristically cool August day...perfection for a day at the zoo! The animals were almost all awake and active. Rudy can spend vast amounts of time watching one species, which we did for the panda (including the 1-year old baby!), cheetah, sloth bear, sloth/monkees, lions and cubs, and clouded leopard.
There were lots of animal trainers at both the aquarium and the zoo. Rudy was a little shy talking to them, but enjoyed hearing about their backgrounds. We learned that trainers typically only have bachelors degrees, often in biology or psychology. Who knew!
