Little Dude's ER Adventure

On Monday afternoon Little Dude woke up from his nap feeling quite hot. I took his temperature and it was a toasty 102 degrees. So I gave him some Tylenol and called the free nurse hot line that our insurance company has. The nurse reassured me that, while his temperature was a little high, without any other obvious symptoms he'd probably be all right. He seemed fine for the rest of the evening and went to bed easily. Then around nine he woke up crying and shaky. His temperature was up to 102.4 and he just didn't seem to feel good at all. I also noticed that his knees seemed kind of red and swollen and he flinched when I touched them. That's when the paranoid mommy sense kicked in and I started to get worried, because I'd read about kids with weird symptoms that suddenly died from infections. My brother-in-law called a neighbor to help give Little Dude a blessing and I also gave him some Tylenol. After waiting a little while more, I decided to take him to the doctor just to make sure everything was all right.

By this point in the night the only real option was the emergency room. And of course by the time we got there he had perked up and was happy and wiggly again. Plus his fever went down to only 99. But the doctor checked him out and said it was good to notice his knees, because they were inflamed. So were his throat and his tonsils. Luckily his heart sounded fine. The doctor explained that sometimes bacteria from infections, especially the throat, can enter the bloodstream and end up in places like the knees or hips. Or even worse, the heart or kidneys. They used to call it rheumatic fever back in the day. Because of the inflammation, the doctor wanted a complete blood workup as well as a urine sample.

At this point I started to feel bad for the poor nurse on duty. She looked visually upset that she had to somehow extract both blood and urine from this little, wiggly baby. I honestly wasn't that impressed with her at all--I think she was new on the job and had a hard time pretending she wasn't. At least urine samples for little babies aren't really too weird--they have a little bag that tapes over his apparatus and then you just wait for it to fill up. Unfortunately, Little Dude refused to pee for the entire two-and-a-half hours we were in the ER, so I had to take him home and put him to bed with a plastic bag taped to his bottom (under the diaper) and then pour the pee into a container the next morning and bring it in to the lab. Fun.

The blood sample was even worse. That was the point when I began to long for Seattle Children's Hospital and nurses who are experienced sticking needles into little tiny veins. The poor nurse had to try two different times--once in Little Dude's hand and another time in his elbow. When she was finished and his little arm was mostly covered with bandages, he sat there looking sadly at the bandages making angry faces and trying to pick them off with his other hand. But they got some blood and a throat swab and determined that he didn't have strep A or sepsis. We got a shot of antibiotic, a prescription for liquid medicine for the next week, and came home at 2:30 in the morning.

Little Dude is feeling a bit better today. His fever has gone down and his knees aren't very swollen any more. He is still fussy when he eats and drinks and I've been a little worried about his fluid intake. He didn't sleep well last night at all; I thought it was just his throat bugging him until I woke up this morning and changed his diaper. He had some very dried-on poop and a red, angry-looking rash all over his bottom. No wonder he didn't want to sleep--I feel bad for not changing his diaper during the night, but I didn't smell anything. I guess my paranoid mommy sense doesn't work so well when I'm feeling sleep deprived.