Not much to report

You would think after being in the hospital for 4 days I would have a lot to update. Unfortunately, we are all kind of unsure of what is going on. I will do a quick recap....

Monday morning when Alex was on day 4 of a low grade temp, Dr. K asked us to take Bug to see his pediatrician. Dr. Benzick checked him out and diagnosed a viral throat infection because he saw pus in the back of his throat. Well his temp kept climbing and by dinnertime Monday Dr. P felt like we needed to come in.

We got to the hospital a little before midnight and went right into the ER. The ER doc thought Alex "looked too good" and admitted him to the observation unit and didn't start antibiotics against Dr. P's recommendations. We were in the obs unit for about 4 hours before we were moved to a regular room, but not in our regular unit. The team came by and confirmed that there was definitely a white patch in his throat, but they thought it was a cyst. He never ran a fever from the time we got the hospital until Tuesday evening. I was just get ready to leave with Missy to go to dinner and his temp was 100.2. I didn't think much of and off we went. When i got back a couple hours later they let me know that his temp was 100.9 and they had called the team. The on call doc quickly ran labs and called Dr. P. They started antibiotics. They also moved us down to our regular unit to monitored more closely. After starting antibiotics we didn't see anymore temps. In the meantime, it was decided that Alex was significantly dehydrated. Despite a bolus of fluids and then IV fluids running as if that was his only fluids and his feeds running he barely peed for 24 hours. We have caught up hydration wise, but it has reopened discussions on whether we need to do IV fluids at home like we used to. There has also been some disagreement about whether we need to do IVIG or not. As of now we have not.

Fast forward to today... the team decided to stop antibiotics and fluids and only do a bolus replacement once a day (like we used to do at home). A few hours later he had spiked a fever to 100.6 again. In the meantime ENT came by and looked at his throat. He had a collection of debris that was cleaned out. So here we sit not knowing much more then we did when we came in. The team is leaning towards virus and still discharging us tomorrow. I am not sure how Dr. K and Dr. P feel about that as I did not see them today.

I think that about catches you up except for one little incident. Yesterday morning I left for my coffee and Alex was asleep. When I got back he was sitting up and his face was bright red and swollen. My knee jerk reaction was "oh no, what is he reacting to". The I remembered one of his antibiotics was running (vancomyocin). It is known for a side effect called Red Man's syndrome that causes redness, swelling and itching. We know Alex gets this so we pretreat with benadryl and run it really slow. The night nurse hadn't read the orders carefully and was running it too quickly. They slowed it down, but the poor boy was red for most of the day. I guess that is one way to get him some color!!!!

Thanks for all the emails, calls, messages, prayers etc. I will update again tomorrow.
Ali