We just couldn't stay away

Well, I promised myself that it would need to be desperate circumstances before we went back to the hospital. Well last night, we reached those circumstances. Matthew has had a cough for a week or so, but it had gotten substantially worse on Friday/Saturday. Sunday, Steve called me while I was a work around 4 and told me Matthew had been asleep all day and now he was shivering, had a temperature of 100 and had just thrown up because he was coughing so hard. I thought the fever was funny, because he was on round the clock Tylenol due to the fact that he just had surgery on Tuesday and was still having pain. Steve called around 6 pm and said he had thrown up 3 more times since then from coughing and his temperature was 102. So I had him give him his Tylenol and told him I'd be home as soon as was off work shortly after 7 pm. He gave me a call at 7:15 on my cell phone saying he still didn't look good and his eyes kept rolling back in his head. I told him I was on my way.

When I ran in the door, I took one look at him and called his doctor. He was pale, limp and wouldn't respond to my voice. His temperature was 103. The nurse that I talked to told me to take him to the ER, and she thought we probably better drive to Children's'. So I packed a quick bag (I still hadn't completely unpacked from last week, so it took me 5 minutes) and out the door we went. When I pulled into the ER, I took him out of his seat and carried him in to the desk. I said, I have a sick baby; they took one look at him and grabbed him from my arms. They had me stay at the desk and give his admission information. When I got back to his room, 4 nurses and the doctor was around his bed. They had him stripped, weighed, EKG leads, and oxygen on him. His temp was 104, and his heart rate was almost 200. His oxygen saturation was in the low 80's. (You want it as close to 100% as possible, generally above 93% or so is good). They took blood from his finger and gave him a breathing treatment, did a chest xray, checked for RSV and influenza, They checked to make sure he didn't have a bladder infection. The doctor who did his G-button happened to be in the ER and he didn't think it was surgery related. They started an IV, drew more blood and ran blood cultures to check for infection. They also gave him an antibiotic in his IV. Each and every test has come back negative. That's good in alot of ways, but frustrating in some ways, too. I feel as if we're crying wolf. We come here and they can find nothing wrong other than he's very sick.
They admitted us and it looks as if we'll be here at least another day or so. He still has a pretty wicked fever and he's sleeping all the time. The IV they started blew shortly after we got to his room and several attempts to restart it failed. So they are running pedialyte in his G-button. He is keeping everything down and not throwing up. He is still requiring oxygen to keep his saturation's up. Today, he is fighting the nurses a little more (last night he didn't even cry when they catheterized him or tried to start an IV- he was completely out of it) and is waking up when he is hungry.
Once again, I'll keep all updated and I'm really looking forward to blogging a post that has NOTHING to do with being the the hospital.