First trip to the ER - 6/22/12

After Will's surgery, he bounced right back to himself the very next day. We noticed though that he didn't quite have his full appetite back, but that was normal after surgery. Sunday night Will had a fever,and it continued on Monday. He was still his normal happy self and played like normal. Fevers continued (103-104) and Tuesday I called the pediatrician to see if we should come in. We did and decided that he had a virus. Lab results were all normal, so I was told to watch for a rash and fever should be over 24 hours from that. He started sleeping a lot, but being sick it seemed normal. Hope was with Will Wednesday and Thursday and he continued to sleep continuously and not want to eat. Wednesday the rash appeared so we waited for fevers to end. They didn't. 

Viral rash as expected

Friday morning I had a sick baby that couldn't do anything but lay wherever I put him. I called pediatrician's office because there was no way that this was going to get any better.

Will was so lethargic. He did not move from this spot until I picked him up. Normally he would try to follow me around the house.  He didn't even get upset when I left the room. 

Back at the pediatrician's office the fever continued. We did blood work again because viral infection should be gone. White blood cells were elevated and Dr. Huss could find no reason why - not strep, not an ear infection, chest sounded clear. Because of the recent surgery, he called the surgeon to discuss possible infection at the site of surgery. Although site infection was very unlikely, Dr. Huss told me to go home, pack some stuff, and go to Vanderbilt ER to most likely be admitted just to get this all checked out.

Vanderbilt ER:
We got to Vandy around 2:00. It was horrible for all of us from the beginning because they started an IV in Will and cathererized him. JT and I left the room but could hear him screaming and crying. So we cried too; nothing worse than your baby in pain! The resident that was in surgery with Will met us there. (Dr. Thomas was in clinic in Jackson.) She didn't see any cause for alarm, but we scheduled and ultrasound. Will did great through it, even napped a little bit. Ultrasound showed that everything was fine from surgery from what they could see. There was still a lot of inflammation and swelling, so everything was a little distorted. The resident prepared us that there was possibly a new hernia that she saw, and we may need to go back to surgery. It was going to be reviewed by radiology and another Urologist and we would know soon. We were very scared, but we got good news that it was only inflammation on vessels that they saw. No surgery yay! But still no answer to these fevers. NeeNee came by and Will really perked up when he saw her. Then we went for a chest x-ray which also showed nothing.

In the ER

We were told that Will would be admitted for observation overnight, but may or may not get moved to an actual room. We were in a tiny space with only 2 chairs. If we wanted a sleeping chair, there was only room for 1, meaning one of us had to go home. That wasn't an option to us; neither of us was going to leave. Right before midnight we got moved to a real room. It was one of the new rooms and felt like a mansion compared to where we had been past 10 hours. The nurses were trying to familiarize us with the room, microfridge, visitor hours, etc. JT even joked that there was no need for the info because we wouldn't be there long.