Backing up a bit, Boone's pediatrician detected a heart murmur at his 3-week check up the week before (June 3rd). No big deal... murmurs usually go away on their own. But she still scheduled him for an EKG the following week (on Thursday morning, June 11th) just to rule out any possible problems. Earlier last week (on Monday), Fenn was sent home from daycare with red dots on his tongue. Apparently, a few kids had been diagnosed the previous week with hand, foot, and mouth disease which is highly contagious. So we took Fenn to the doctor that day, but the doctor said he had some other kind of virus. Nothing you can do... just let it run its course. Fenn ran a temperature for a couple of days and then was fine. But by the time we knew Fenn was sick, Boone had already been exposed to the virus. On Thursday morning we took Boone for the EKG. We were told we would probably get the results the next day (after the cardiologist looked at the scans). Afterward, I was home with Boone and Dan had gone to work. Boone felt warm to me, so I took his temperature and it was 101.7.... high enough to call the doctor. I called and they got me in a couple of hours later. Because of Boone's age (under a month), they don't take chances with infants and immediately arranged for Boone to be admitted to Children's Hospital. Standard procedure is to run all kinds of tests (bloodwork, spinal fluid, etc.), give them IV fluids and antibiotics, and monitor them for a couple of days. {NOTE: We were under the impression we'd only be in the hospital for a couple of nights.} The first series of tests looked pretty good and pretty much pointed toward the same virus Fenn had. (The bloodwork would be repeated each morning after this.)We decided for Dan to stay at the hospital the first night, and I would stay home with Fenn. Then I would stay with Boone on Friday night and Dan would stay home with Fenn. (Oh, on Friday afternoon we got the results of the EKG and they were negative. The murmur was gone.) The last time Boone's temperature was up was sometime in the early morning hours on Friday (4:00 AMish). After that, it stayed down without the need for Tylenol. But on Saturday morning, we learned we weren't going home that afternoon. The doctor wanted Boone to stay for a 3rd night. Apparently, Boone's white blood cell count was a bit low. Something to do with the Lymphocyte white blood cells, which fight viral infections, being low. And since the white blood cells were working so hard to fight the viral infection, this was affecting the Neutrophil white blood cells, which fight bacterial infections, and causing those levels to be low. And if they're low, then he might not be able to fight off a bacterial infection if exposed to anything. Anyway, because of all of this, they wanted to keep him another night and re-check things the next morning. They said that once his white blood cell counts start going up, they'll let Boone go home. They just really don't take any chances with infants.
So..... The third night turned in to a fourth night because the neutrophil count had not come up enough on Sunday morning. On Monday morning, the neutrophil count was up to 400. The magic number is 500, though, so we had to stay a fifth night. On Tuesday morning the neutrophil count was up to 800. We finally got to go home. The whole thing was exhausting to all of us. Dan and I continued to alternate who stayed at home with Fenn and who stayed at the hospital with Boone over all 5 nights. We didn't want either of them to have to be without either parent for too long. One of the most difficult things to me was having Boone hooked up to the IV. It made it very difficult to hold him and love on him because you were always concerned about bending the line and cutting off flow of the IV fluids and antibiotics, or just concerned about hurting him. Thankfully, on Monday morning he was done with the antibiotics and didn't need the IV fluids, so they unhooked him from everything. At least the last day, we could snuggle with him. UPDATE: On Friday, June 19th, Boone went for a follow-up visit with his pediatrician. He's doing great!
No comments:
Post a Comment