Thursday, April 26, 2007

Our 1st Children's ER visit

It has been almost 2 weeks since my last post but feels like 2 months! In my last entry I said how long of a week it was because Evelyn was sick...well, she got better at the end of that week (so we thought) but ended up getting a nasty infection that had us at the doctors 4 times and even a trip to the Children's Hospital ER between 4/16 and 4/20.
It started monday night when she felt like she had a very high fever - but we just chalked it up to teething and sent her to bed with Tylenol. I went out the next day (even though she still felt warm) with her and Gavin and my friends even said how hot she felt. So when we got home, I took her official temperature and it was over 103.7 (I took it out because she was so upset) so we went to the doctors right away. She had a clean exam (except for the fever) so they said to come back in 2 days if she still had it. We just gave her lots of Tylenol and Motrin to try to control the fever and keep her comfortable. Her fever stayed very high (never dropping below 101) through Thursday so we packed her up and took her again. She never fussed or showed any other symptom - just extremely high temps, a little lethargy and restless nights of sleep and sweat. Again, clean exam - no ear infections, lungs sounded good, etc. While we were there Patrick was concerned about the length of time her fever was so high and asked about febrile seizures. The doctors said that those happen in infants and children who "spike" fevers rapidly - not in children who have fevers over a long period of time, so we didn't worry.
We took her home (Patrick returned to work) and low-and-behold, her fever finally broke. It went down to about 97 (her normal temp) and she was happy as could be. It came nap time, and I picked her up to rock her to sleep and she started shaking uncontrollably, turning white in color with purple cobweb things covering her skin and her eyes rolling back into her head. I immediately called the doctor (as she was feeling very hot again and I assumed it was that febrile seizure thing we talked about) and they talked me through it and once it was over (about 7-10 minutes later) they told me to head to the Children's Hospital to get some tests done.
Luckily, Patrick knew people over there so we got in right away and were seen very quickly by a great attending physician. She explained that we needed blood tests, a urinalysis and a chest x-ray. I had to walk away when they did the blood and urinalysis because I was to sad to see Evelyn in any pain (although Patrick said she did just fine). The results from the blood came back pretty scary as her white counts were way too high, so we knew we were dealing with a very bad infection - we just didn't know where. It could have been an UTI, a pneumonia, an ear infection that moved to the blood, a nasty virus that just hadn't gone away yet...we didn't know. The results kept coming back negative (which was good because she didn't have a major bacterial infection - but bad because we still had no clue what it was). The next step was to do a spinal tap - but the doctor saw how active and happy and smiley Evelyn was a decided we didn't need to because there was NO way she had meningitis (thank god). So we were relieved.
They ended up giving her a shot of a high dose antibiotic and sending us home to monitor her. We were on a strict regimen of Tylenol and Motrin to keep the fever down (not to spike again for fear of another seizure - which by the way is not epileptic at all - just the body's reaction for going from cold to hot too quickly and happens in 1 out of 25 children with no long lasting effects). She did get a fever on friday night for a bit, but that was the last of it. She is now back to normal and back to being healthy! Thanks for everyone's thoughts and prayers during this time - we needed it. And a huge thanks to our friends the Welshes for taking Gavin during all the doctor appointments and hospital visit! We are so lucky to have friends like that!