My 14.5 month old has bacterial pneumonia but hasn't really been sick!

[tykys]

My son suddenly spiked a fever out of nowhere yesterday morning.  Nothing brought it down except a lukewarm bath, but even then, it only lasted about 15 minutes after I got him out.  Today it went up to 104 so I decided it was time to take him to Urgent Care.  At UC they gave him Motrin and an icepack, came back in 30 min to check on him and it was 105.1.  They sent us next door to the ER and we were given more meds (tylenol this time) and it went down to 103.5.  They did a chest xray and came back with a bacterial pneumonia dx.  They couldn't get the fever down below below 103, but gave us an rx for antiBs, told us to follow up with his ped in 2 days, and sent us on his way.  Now it's 6:13 am, I haven't slept a wink, have been online researching this scary condition and I'm a mess.  He had a very minor cold about 3-4 weeks ago, but it was MINOR.  He hasn't so much as coughed or sneezed in weeks and appears to be fine.  At one point he was even laughing and playing in the ER and the nurses were amazed.  I'm scared.  How do you get bacterial pneumonia without even being that sick?  I don't understand.  I'm sorry if I sound ignorant, but well, I am.  I feel like he is being mis dx'd.  I don't know why. 

ETA - He was born @ 33w6d and was in the NICU for 23 days and sent home on an apnea monitor.  Don't know if this has anything to do with anything...

[lindberg99]

The same thing happened to my son when he was a baby, probably 18 months old. I took him to the babysitter's in the morning, went to work and picked him up at noon. She said he had fallen asleep, which was really unusual. I took him home and he went to sleep again and by 2:00, his fever was like 103! It came on so fast. I took him to the ped by about 4:30 and it turned out he had pneumonia. He gave him an antibiotic shot and I think probably also a prescription. The antibiotics worked really fast and DS was much better the next day. It was weird. He never even had a cough. My son was also a premie, a 30 weeker. Maybe their lungs are more susceptible.

[Llyra]

My DD2 had pneumonia last winter. Other than the fever, she was never really all that sick-looking. It was what the docs called an "under-whelming" case of pneumonia. Anyway, I sure hope your little one is better soon. If you don't see a marked improvement in 24 hours, I would be heading back to a health care provider-- sometimes the first antibiotic they try doesn't target the bacteria that's in there. That's what we went through with my DD2, actually.

In the meantime-- those broad-spectrum abxs can be hard on the gut. You might want to consider starting probiotics.

FWIW, my DD2 was also somewhat premature, and low-birthweight.