Be Gone Sickness!

Let's just say it's been a long week!  The fun started on Monday night when we were at dinner.  Evelyn was really fussy and not wanting to eat a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. - not even cheese and corn, two of her favorites.  She actually threw the cheese at Dan...he was not impressed.  Since she didn't eat well, when we got home we tried to get her to eat some more.  As she was sitting in her high chair, she started vomiting.  Dan got her into the bath tub to clean her up, and I cleaned up the high chair mess.  We brought her downstairs and spread out a towel in case there was a repeat performance.  She was acting more normal and playing, and we gave her water to keep her hydrated.

We knew she wasn't feeling well when she started doing this...

As we were taking her upstairs, she started vomiting again and couldn't even keep water down, so we called the doctor.  He said not to give her anything for 2-3 hours and let her stomach settle, then try and give her a teaspoon of Gatorade every 15 minutes to slowly test her stomach.  If she vomited again, or couldn't keep that down, we were supposed to call him back.  She slept for about an hour, and then was vomiting again.  She was dry heaving for about an hour, so we called the doctor again.  He prescribed her some anti-vomiting medication, so Dan headed to CVS to pick that up.  Fortunately, it worked and she was able to sleep, albeit in fits.  I went through 3 sets of pajamas that night.  She slept a little better when she had some water to drink.  I went ahead and went to work on Tuesday and Amber was home with her all day.  She was not really herself and definitely didn't eat normally, but was able to keep what she did eat down.  On Tuesday night, we thought that she was feeling a little better because she ate a halfway decent dinner.  She didn't really play like she usually does, she was more content to just sit on the couch with me and watch Toy Story.

 Or stand and watch Toy Story...

Well, she wasn't feeling as well as we had hoped.  She woke up vomiting in the night, so we gave her some of the medication again.  After about an hour, it seemed to be working, and we got a little sleep.  I decided not to go in on Wednesday but to go ahead an let Amber come in so that I could get some work done.  I went to a coffee shop here in town while they stayed at the house for the morning, then came home shortly after noon.  She was really lethargic all day, and still wasn't eating much at all.  The only thing she would drink was water.  She was also breathing really shallowly and rapidly, and her stomach was pretty distended.

When she did eat, this is what it looked like :-(

I called her pediatrician, who wanted to see her, so we went in at 4:00.  She was concerned that Evelyn was getting dehydrated, and also wanted to rule out another UTI and appendicitis, so she sent us to Driscoll (our local children's hospital).  

We meet again...

We waited for quite a while to actually see someone there.  While we were waiting, Evelyn ate 8-10 pretzels, probably the most she had eaten since Monday in one sitting.  The attending doctor wanted to get a urine culture to rule out the UTI, and ran some blood work to check her sodium levels (since she hadn't been drinking anything but water for 2 days).  

My sweet baby - waiting on her lab results...

She had this pretzel in her hand through it all - at this point, she'd probably been holding it for about 2 hours. :-(

Sometimes you just need a pretzel to help you wait...

Her urine culture came back clean (yay!), but her blood work was worrisome.  Her sodium levels were low (which we kind of expected), but her glucose levels were also very low (39...it should be in the 90-110 range).  Given that she hadn't eaten well or kept anything down since lunch on Monday, I guess this isn't surprising.  I keep thinking how much lower it probably was before she ate those pretzels.  No wonder she was lethargic and not wanting to do anything but sit.  The attending doctor ordered an IV to hydrate her, bring her sodium levels up, and glucose.  They also wanted us to give Evelyn orange juice to help bring her blood sugar up.  Ummm...apparently they have not met Evelyn because the girl refuses to eat or drink anything that she doesn't want to.  They made us force feed orange juice to her through a syringe.  Such fun.  She got so upset she vomited again...all over me.  Fortunately I had packed an extra set of pajamas for her, and an extra shirt for me in her diaper bag when we went to the pediatrician's office - I figured I didn't want to wish I had if I needed it.

It took 4 nurses and 7 attempts to finally get an IV in without blowing her vein.  That fun took about an hour and a half.  It was awful.  You can see all of the little bandages where they tried to get in - and the rash on her arm where they tied the rubber band thing.  Poor baby, my heart hurts just looking at these pictures remembering what she went through. :-(

This was after they finally got it in - she was so tired...

I was trying to help her fall asleep, so we had the Scripture Lullabies CD that she listens to at night playing on the iPad.  Sleep wasn't happening because the "room" in the curtain next door had their TV blaring playing Hannah Montana (for real?).  Finally, the attending doctor asked to turn it down so he could hear them, so Evelyn was able to finally fall asleep.

The doctor said she wouldn't let Evelyn leave until she saw Evelyn drink - so we took a picture :-)

And a video...just in case!

We were discharged around 2am, so we got home and went straight to bed.  She made it through the night with no vomiting (they gave her some more anti-vomit meds at the hospital), and woke up acting more like herself.  She still seemed a little off and tired, so I figured we were getting close to past this.

Mommy let me eat some chocolate chips to keep my blood sugar up, I like them!

After her morning nap, she was sooo much more like herself!  She was actually playing and talking...music to my ears!

 

I really thought she was on the back end of it...but she woke up vomiting last night again. :-(  And now Dan seems to be coming down with something.  I'm ready for this bug to get the heck out!  She's been somewhat normal in terms of playing today, although her appetite is still awful.  I'm really hoping we are getting close to this going away!  This Mommy is tired, and isn't really wanting to stay awake waiting for the washing machine to finish so that I can get her sheets in the dryer just in case we go through 3 sets in a night again, and zzzzz....