A painful New Year - Early January, 2007

We managed to spend New Year at home and even managed to get Ciara out on her new roller-skates, but it was clear to us that Ciara was not right. She was due back in for a check-up on the Thursday following her initial release and we voiced our concerns about Ciara's continuing pain. The docs at Portlaoise told us to expect up to 6 weeks for Ciara to recover from the irritable hip so we let it be. Back home on Friday night her temperature peaked again, and she could not sleep with the pain. She was crying "ouch" every few minutes.

On Saturday 6th January, we decided to take her into hospital again as she was clearly in a lot of pain. Any time we've had to go to A&E recently one of us has had to be admitted so we packed our bags for an extended stay just in case, we getting used to spending Bank Holidays in various hospital's A&Es. Again we were reassured that everything was as expected and that the irritable hip would clear up with time and rest. So we were back home again and unpacked our suitcases.

The following day, Sunday, after a very bad night of pain and fever, we took her back to hospital. No child should need to go through that much pain without medical attention. This time she was admitted. What followed were the normal round of blood tests, ultrasounds and x-rays. We were informed that they were trying to rule out anything sinister like rheumatic fever and juvenile arthritis. They found fluid on a different hip to the one she had problems with at Christmas and decided that Ciara would need to have an orthopaedic check-up. Once the tests were completed, we were shipped off Dublin the same night.

And so, on the evening of Sunday 8th January 2007, we discovered Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin.