A trip to Dallas for a wedding turned into a nightmare--not necessarily for us but for one of our grandchildren.

We drove up from Houston yesterday morning. The plan was for Ellie and me to care for Jordan, the 16 month old while everyone else enjoyed the rehearsal dinner. Everyone left around 4:30 for the church, leaving Jordan with us. Rebecca told us she had been fussy all day but she seemed OK when they left.

Jordan likes chicken strips so I made a quick trip to a local Sonic drive-in, picked up a couple of chicken strip dinners and came back to George and Linda's house. That's when thing started going wrong.

Jordan would not eat dinner and would not drink any liquids. I felt her forehead a couple of times and she seemed warm. By the time we finished dinner she was blazing hot. Ellie and I took her upstairs, gave her a cool water bath and some Tylenol then put her to bed. Before putting her to bed, I checked her temperature with an ear thermometer and it was 102.3 degrees.

After putting her to bed, we went downstairs, checking on her every 15 minutes of so. Strangely enough even though she appeared dead tired, she would not go to sleep. She just lay in her bed, tossing back and forth, with her eyes wide open. After a couple of hours we decided to get her up. As Ellie sat rocking her she appeared completely out of it. She lay there, limp and almost lifeless. I gave her another dose of Tylenol but that didn't seem to help.

Meanwhile I had called Rebecca on her cell phone. She decided to drive home from the rehearsal dinner to check on Haley. But in the interim, I decided that Jordan was just too hot so we put her in another cool water bath. I was actually glad to here her start crying because she didn't seem to have much response before then.

Within about 20 minutes Rebecca arrived. Rebecca thought it might be strep throat so after some discussion, we decided to take her to an urgent care clinic. We set out for one not far from the Morris house but when we arrived, it was closed. We then made the decision that should have been made first--take her to an emergency room.

We drove to Presbyterian Hospital on Walnut Hill expecting a 4 hour wait before even getting in to see a doctor. Much to our surprise, they took her into triage within about 10 minutes. The triage nurse checked her temperature at 103.5. I had dosed her with Tylenol about an hour earlier so it had to have been over 104 when we left the house.

The triage nurse dosed her with Motrin, a horrifying thing to watch because she was forcing liquid medication down her throat while the child was screaming at the top of her lungs. I was sure she would strangle on the liquid but somehow the nurse got it in her.

We then went to the urgent care center and into a standard ER hospital room. Within minutes we had a visit from a nurse and within 15 minutes a doctor was there--a record for expediency in my opinion.

After examining her, the doctor decided she would need a battery of tests: throat culture, Chest x-ray, blood count, urinealysis, and culture growth. Drawing blood and urine from a 16 month old child is traumatic to say the least. It took them at least 20 minutes to insert a catheter, get the urine, and insert a hep lock with Jordan screaming at the top of her lungs the entire time.

We were told the tests would take an hour or hour and a half. They were back within about 45 minutes. All the tests looked normal but the doctor said he saw something as he put it "not quite right" on the chest x-ray. No explanation other than the potential for pneumonia. The decision was made to give her antibiotics. To do this, we had to move to another part of the ER. They took us in right away and within a few minutes a nurse had started a drip line.

The antibiotic drip took about 30 minutes to finish and, after some wrangling with the admitting people, we left the hospital. The time was 2:30 a.m. and we had been there for 5 hours. Not bad I suppose for the work done on her since the average time in an ER is 4 hours.

By the time we got Jordan and Rebecca back to the Morris house and we drove to the hotel, it was 3:00 a.m. We crawled in bed and passed out until daylight through the drapes woke us up around 8:30.

Jordan is doing better this morning but not eating or drinking much. She needs to be hydrated because it's been about 18 hours since she's had substantial liquid. Hopefully she will get back in the groove today.

Looks like we won't be going to the wedding and that's OK with me. We don't mind taking care of her and would do it again in a heartbeat.