Where to begin

Well as I'm sure you saw the past few days Addison has been feeling under the weather. We had taken her to the doctor on Monday for a fever and she checked out with just a sore throat. We had been treating her symptoms and watching for anything new. She has still been running a fever and slightly fussy. That is until yesterday afternoon.
We spent most of the day yesterday out and about getting all of our Christmas things done, getting the tree, running errands, picking up our truck from the shop so Addison missed her middle of the day nap. When we got home from doing everything I put her down for a nap 2 hours later than she normally takes one. With the video monitor in hand (or on hip actually) I set about getting all the outside lights and decorations up and then started tackling the tree with Elf on in the background. I mentioned to Carlton that she sure was taking a long nap. I decided to wake her up a little after 5 since she was still sleeping and I didn't want it to interfere with her bedtime. I got out the camera so that I could capture her reaction to seeing the tree for the first time.

It was while taking this picture that I noticed that her neck looked funny. Upon further investigation I realized that it was REALLY swollen, so like any good mother I flipped out and called our pediatrician office. Their answering service answered and said the triage nurse would have to call us back and I told her we were already on our way (we were actually going to the ER since they didn't answer the first 2 times I called but the office is the same direction) and someone WOULD see us when we got there. They got us right back and said that is was most likely her lymph node but they wanted to do some blood work to make sure it wasn't something more (she actually said the word CANCER to me). The nurse came back in and started getting everything prepared to get her blood. Now Addison does not like the doctors office in general and really doesn't like this nurse for some reason. She is also having a lot of stranger anxiety and only wants me to touch her or be near her. In order to get her blood they decided to try and get it out of her arm. The process just to get ready for the blood draw is traumatic enough, put on the tourniquet, tape her arm to a board so it is still, then try and find the vein and then finally stick it, I swear it took 5 or 10 minutes and her poor little arm was so red. Then NOTHING. The nurse didn't even hit the vein and she was fishing around. I swear I wanted to push her away. She finally stopped trying and I lost it and had to have my husband take over and I literally stood in the corner sobbing.
While the nurse then tried to stick her finger and get enough blood.
I stood in the corner of the doctors office sobbing.
Finally the doctor came in and we decided to stop trying and come back in. By this point Addison was so upset she was red head to toe and sobbing and gagging and having trouble catching her breath. I took her and it took me a while to calm her down since anytime someone would look at her she would start crying again.
They put her on Augmentin since it pretty much treats everything and is a good strong antibiotic.
They scheduled us to come back in the morning to try and get blood again and recheck her.
I have to say it is great that babies can be easily distracted and don't dwell on things like we do. Once we left the doctor and went to the pharmacy to get her medicine she was laughing and flirting with the pharmacist. I was still a wreck and worried to death about her. At this point it had been over 2 hours at the doctors and over an hour past her bedtime. I kept her up a little while once we got home just to make sure she didn't have any weird reaction to the medicine.
So for everyone that actually made it through all that, here is the photo evidence.

Her good, unswollen side and her band aide where they stuck her finger :(

Her swollen side as of Wed. night when we got back from the doctor

Her swollen neck tonight (Thur.) right before bed with 24 hours of antibiotics in her system.

So this morning we went back to the doctor, same screaming on her part, none on mine thank goodness. They looked her over again, had another doctor look her over and conferred on the next step. They decided to send us to the hospital to get the blood drawn (thank goodness) since they are better at it. 3+ hours later blood drawn (first stick and they didn't have to tape her arm down) and lots of stuff sent off for testing including cat scratch fever and overall CBC panel with diff and white blood cell stuff (that is all I can remember).

Her poor little hand where they stuck her today to draw blood.
Now it is just wait and see what the blood work says, we go back on Sat. morning and hopefully the blood work results will be in.