Hospital Stay

I intended on posting last week but Griffin was in the hospital Monday-Friday :( It was actually a similar situation to what happened to Brendan when he was around Griffin's age. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read the post here

Anyway, on Sunday we went to Waco to see family for the day. Griffin seemed kind of fussy the whole day but I didn't think much of it. On our way home, I was sitting in the back seat with the kids and Griffin would be asleep and he would scream out in his sleep like he was in pain. I thought maybe he had gas. When we got home and tried to put him down for the night, he kept screaming out and wouldn't settle down. At about 1:00 AM, I thought he felt warm so I decided to take his temperature. It was 101.8. About 30 minutes later, I took it again and it was 101.4. We decided to give him a little bit of Tylenol. I slept with him on my chest and woke up about 3:00 AM and thought he felt really warm. I thought maybe he was just hot from sleeping on me and didn't take his temperature. At 5:00 AM, I thought he definitely felt much too warm for it just to have been from me, so I took his temperature again. It was 103.1 :( I decided I needed to call the pediatrician's nurse line because I didn't know what to do. She told me I needed to take him to Cook Children's Hospital ER to get checked out.

We got to the ER and, of course, they said they needed to do a spinal tap because he was so young and didn't have any other symptoms besides a fever and a rash they discovered once I got there. He had to have blood and urine drawn and the spinal tap. His white count was low so they decided to admit us to the hospital and to watch the blood, spinal and urine cultures to see if anything grew in them. Something did grow in the urine and blood cultures so we had to stay and wait to see what it was to see if he possibly had a bacterial infection. In the meantime, they did a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia and an ultrasound of his kidneys to check for a urinary tract infection. Both of those came back fine. He continued to run a 103 fever, even after getting medicine and anytime I would touch him he would scream and cry like it hurt :(

The cultures were supposed to be identified on Wednesday, but of course they didn't grow out like they expected and we had to wait until Thursday. The pediatrician on staff told us he thought it was probably a viral infection, not bacterial, and that there was a 5% chance the bacteria that was growing could be a contaminant (which is what happened to Brendan). We found out on Wednesday that it was NOT the common skin contaminant of Staph something or other (whatever to common staph is that we all have on our skin, which is what Brendan's was, so we thought it was less likely that it was going to be a contaminant and we would have to stay in the hospital at least a week.

Well, we found out Thursday morning that it WAS a contaminant, but not something that they could identify where it came from. What was in his urine was also a contaminant. So, there is a FIVE percent chance of it being a contaminant and I've had TWO kids get cultures with contaminants!!! Pretty ridiculous odds, huh?

But, they wanted to keep us another day in the hospital because Griffin had still been running a fever and still had a bad rash on his body. The pediatrician had an infectious diseases doctor come look at Griffin as well. If he didn't get a fever all day Thursday, we would likely get to go home Friday. The ID doctor agreed she thought it was a viral infection of some sort. He didn't get a fever all day Thursday and his white count had gone up in the blood they took Friday morning. We were able to go home on Friday but one of Griffin's levels was still very low (I can't remember the name of the level but it is something in your bone marrow that indicates infection). They like it to be 1500 at least and his was only 270. We are going to our pediatrician tomorrow and he has to have blood drawn again to make sure the number went up. I'm not sure if we will have to be re-admitted or what if it doesn't.

So, it was NOT a fun week. I spent the week at the hospital with Griffin. Tim was with Brendan and we also had my mom and stepdad and my dad and stepmom helping with keeping Brendan throughout the week. It was a crazy, exhausting time. Hopefully his counts will have gone up tomorrow and we won't have anything else to worry about. We also were unable to go to his two month appointment Friday because we didn't get out of the hospital in time.

We have his two month appointment tomorrow now, so I will update tomorrow with his two month pictures, some other pictures, and his stats. Say a little prayer for us that everything is back to normal with him!