Our visit to Children's Hospital

For purposes of documenting – I want this in here.  It’s a little late, but it’s taken a little while to get caught up at home.  All about Aaden’s visit to Children’s hospital.

The weekend of June 7^th – we were looking forward to a quiet, uneventful weekend at home. No plans other than to work on our laundry room (which we are in the process of re-doing.  Pics to follow).  Friday we got the call from daycare that Aaden was running a slight fever.  This was pretty typical, and he had been sent home from daycare a half dozen times for this.  Poor kid just couldn’t get healthy.  See here to learn about the start of everything. .  Aaron picked him up and spent the afternoon with him.  He went to bed early, but he generally seemed like himself.  We figured it was the cold he was still battling + teething.

Saturday morning he had a slight fever when he woke up (around 101).  We gave him meds and he was good for about 3 hours.  As soon as the medicine started to wear off, he started shivering and his hands and feet were turning blue.  We did some looking online and it seemed normal when a fever spikes.  More medicine and we decided to watch him, since it was early am and urgent care was open all day.  Fast forward to about noon, we’re at Target picking up more meds, and the shivers return.  This time his lips start turning blue along with his hands and feet.   I leave and rush to urgent care – and they send me to the ER. 

Once at the ER, they start a bunch of tests.  Chest X-ray, bloodwork, urine sample (that they have to stick a tube up and pull out!).  They started an IV since he was very dehydrated.  Aaron was just finishing up work and was heading over so I kept letting the nurses know so they would let him into the ER.   Once Aaron got there, the Dr noticed and came in.  He said that he had a few conclusions from their tests, and while it was nice to have answers, they weren’t what we wanted to hear.  He said that it looked like he had pneumonia in his lungs, which didn’t surprise us with all the sickness/coughing he had been having.  The Dr. also said that when they did the bloodwork, the tech actually called him back to look at the smear.  They said his WBC was over 30,000 (normal is 10,000) and they said the cells very mis-shapen and abnormal, and for that reason they wanted to send us to Children’s to see a hematologist.   They would send us by ambulance and we should plan to be there for a while.  My stomach fell.  I was expecting a nasty cold, even pneumonia didn’t surprise me.  But abnormal blood cells, an ambulance ride and MORE hospitals?!  I had a pit in my stomach and even though they didn’t say it, I knew they were thinking it was leukemia. 

Did you know this is how they do babies' X-Rays?



Waiting to ride in the ambulance - and feeling pretty good with the IV, antibiotics and ibuprofin.



We had a few hours to wait (ambulance was being used for a car accident), so we took turns running home to pack, pick up the house and feed the neighbor’s cats.  We called my parents to come home from the cabin, since we would need them to take Vada.  About 6:30 pm we boarded the ambulance for a ride down to Children’s.  Once at Children’s we were admitted to the ER for their own tests and work up on our sick little guy.  All the while, Aaden’s fever kept spiking to between 103 – 105.2 when we first got the ER.  He was one sick little dude.

Poor baby and his high fever.



About 9:00pm a Doctor came in to tell us that a hematologist looked at his bloodwork and ruled out leukemia.  THANK GOD.  It was a long afternoon, but we were lucky to get the results that fast.  They still wanted him admitted to the hospital since they couldn’t get his fevers under control. 

We ended up staying till Tuesday, June 11th.  He didn’t kick the fevers until Monday afternoon, and he was in rough shape all weekend.  They confirmed pneumonia and adenovirus.  So the combination of a bacterial infection (pneumonia) and the virus was the reason why they believe his blood cells were so mis-shapen.  His WBC was very elevated at admittance and stayed up there till Monday morning.  Monday morning’s blood work and Tuesday’s was finally on the way back down, and with the fever gone we were sent home.



Our room and what we did for 3 days.  We got caught up on New Girl though.  Thank God for IPAD's and Hulu. :-)



 Defiantly not the weekend we had planned, but we thank our lucky stars that Aaden was sick with a curable illness.  We were in isolation at Children’s since we were placed on the oncology floor with all the children battling various cancers.  It was a somber experience.  We are so thankful for our healthy little man!  While our stay wasn’t very pleasant, (we had a twin bed to share and didn’t get a room with a shower until Monday) we were lucky it was a short stay.  We were sent home with 4 medications to give him and a slew of instructions.  But it was nice to be home again.

Then that weekend he felt MUCH better!