Dane goes to the hospital

It sounds so dramatic to say it like that. I felt almost bad telling people that Dane was in the hospital because it sounds so scary and awful, but I actually was relieved to be there and felt the whole time like everything was going to be fine. It was such a relief to have the doctors recognize what was going on, and take it seriously, and to remove the responsibility of deciding what to do about him or if his fever was high enough from my shoulders. It was a very stressful few days leading up to the hospital before we went there, but once we were there, the hardest thing was just juggling Graham and keeping an eye on Dane's temperature. I just wanted to write this all down, although this is way more detail than anyone else needs to know. Feel free to skim.

It all started on my birthday (what a great day) when Dane came in and told me he wasn't feeling good during his naptime. I was literally in the middle of texting the words, "No more sickness! We are finally all feeling better!" to my sister-in-law who had asked how we were doing when he walked in. It seemed just like a normal fever, and the next day (Thursday) I brought him to the walk-in clinic and he had an ear infection, so the doctor gave me an antibiotic and we went on our merry way. Then three hours later, Dane's eyes got watery and red and started leaking non-stop goop, so we went back to the walk-in for some antibiotic eyedrops for pinkeye. But he kept getting the fevers on Friday, and they were getting pretty high. On Saturday we were about to head out to go to an air show in Fort Worth when we realized he had a 103.5 fever and a rash all over. So I took him to the urgent care and they said he had scarlet fever. (!!)

Apparently scarlet fever is taken care of by the same antibiotics he was already taking for his ear infection, so they said not to worry and just carry on. But his fevers kept spiking Saturday (up to 104+) and on Saturday night he came out of his room at about 9 having thrown up all over the bed. He threw up several more times during the night and all day Sunday. He basically didn't eat anything and eventually was throwing up even the water and even worse, the Tylenol, which he needed with his fevers going so high. I got so worried I called his pediatrician (the on-call number) and she said just to keep giving him Tylenol/Ibuprofen and cool baths and to come in first thing on Monday morning. So we did, and she said his ear infection looked like it wasn't getting better with the antibiotics they gave him and she gave him an antibiotic shot which she hoped would clear everything up. Just in case, we scheduled a follow-up for Tuesday morning as well. I can't overstate how stressful the weekend was. He was acting so sick and refusing the medicine and screaming about the cool baths and not wanting to drink the water and gatorade we were trying to give him and I kept thinking, should I bring him in to the ER?? (Because of course it was the weekend and his pediatrician wasn't open.)

This was how he looked on Tuesday morning before we went in to the doctor's again. I decided not to give him Tylenol until right before we went in, because she needed to see how bad he really was. On Monday, Dane had perked up by the time we got there and was acting totally normal and even asking for snacks, which he hadn't done for a few days. But when we were there on Tuesday, our doctor knew something was up and told me it looked like something called Kawasaki disease. She wasn't very familiar with it, she'd only seen it a few times in her residency, but she looked it up and said he met all the criteria of Kawasaki: high fevers for five+ days, scarlet fever rash (so he didn't have scarlet fever, it was just the Kawasaki looking like scarlet fever), red chapped lips and mouth, red swollen eyes, swollen hands and feet. The problem with Kawasaki is that it is inflammation of the blood vessels, and although it will eventually go away on its own, it may affect the arteries around your heart and cause aneurysms. So they take it very seriously--and we were sent over to the ER at our children's hospital, which is luckily right across the street from Tommy's work.

I feel so, so, so very grateful that our pediatrician recognized it for what it was. She hadn't ever dealt with it before. But she was able to recognize it and send us to the hospital where they saw it pretty frequently. Those doctors at the hospital knew exactly what to do and were able to answer all of our questions. We felt so blessed that we were in good hands all along the way.

Dane waiting in the ER to be checked in.

He did NOT want to get the IV put in. He cried and cried and it took about five different people trying to get it in. But once it was in he was a good sport about it and he totally left it alone the rest of the time we were there. 

Look how sick he looks. 

Anyways, we got to the ER and they did some bloodwork and we waited for about five hours watching TV while they did a bunch of tests and decided where to send us. They also did a chest X-ray of Dane to make sure he didn't have a silent pneumonia (since he also had a nasty virus on top of the ear infection, pinkeye, and Kawasaki's that was making him cough horribly). Eventually they admitted us and sent us upstairs to spend the night. The doctor up there decided to monitor him overnight and see how his fevers got before starting to treat him, because there's no test to say if you have Kawasaki or not, so they didn't want to over-treat him in case it was something else they hadn't checked yet. 

He had fevers throughout the first night but they were giving him Tylenol and Ibuprofen regularly so it never got that high. But in the morning they decided to hold off on the Tylenol to see what his body did regularly, and within a few hours he had spiked up to 104.5. So they jumped into action, and we had to wrestle with Dane for 10 minutes to get him to swallow the Tylenol (he was SO DONE taking medicine!), and they gave him an IV with immunoglobin antibodies to fight off the Kawasaki. The IV took 12 hours and they had to check his vitals every hour to make sure his body was responding fine. 

When he wasn't feeling terrible we played a few games--they brought us Candyland and a Memory game.

They also gave him an EKG to check and see if his heart had been affected at all by the inflammation. It looked perfect.

After they finished the IVIG, Dane basically started feeling better. They want to keep you there for observation for at least 36 hours after the IVIG ended, and he kept getting low-grade fevers so they kept extending our stay to see if they would need to do the whole treatment again (and then extend it another 36 hours after that). But he was feeling so much better already. The last 2-3 days in the hospital were mostly just the nurses taking his temperature every four hours. It was super low-key and Dane literally watched the same 2 Paw Patrol DVDs on repeat for two days straight. He would not let us change them and if we turned them off he went berserk. It was CRAZY. I honestly think he liked the hospital because he was watching non-stop TV and he got to order hot chocolate and juice and soda from the cafeteria. He was pretty much in heaven.

We smuggled Grahammy in to visit him every day even though we weren't supposed to because of his virus. Graham wasn't a great visitor though. He got bored after about 30 seconds and wanted to leave the room. We kept saying how grateful we were that it wasn't Graham who was the one stuck in the hospital bed with an IV in his arm.

 Kurt came to the hospital on Friday night so we could all have our family pizza movie night like we always do. We watched Planes Fire and Rescue and Dane at least was totally enthralled.

Finally on Saturday they deemed him fit enough to go home and we brought him home! We were so happy to have him feeling better. They kind of scared us with dire warnings of "If he has any fever at all this next week, you need to bring him straight back to the ER" and it created a pretty stressful day on Saturday when he started getting a mini fever. He cooled off naturally without any Tylenol though and we decided not to check ourselves back in at the hospital. I never felt that stressed in the hospital--it was before we got there and then after we got home that it was pretty awful. He still looked pretty pale and tired after coming home for a few days though.

So happy to be home!

After a few days in the hospital I was just thinking, "I am going to buy Dane any presents he wants once he gets out of here because HE DESERVES IT." Plus I was just so grateful he was okay that I was feeling like a cheapo for having refused to buy him the turntable he's been asking for for his train track. He gets all the presents! I spent a while searching around the Thomas and Friends website and got him a few (not-as-expensive) special track things that were waiting for him when we got home.

The first two or three days home from the hospital he was super, super tired. We had our Primary program at church the day after he came home and he just marched up and said his part super loud into the microphone (the loudest of all the kids) and sang, but then we had to take him home partway through the second hour because he looked like he was really wilted. Monday he took a long nap. But ever since then he has been back to his normal self and hasn't needed extra naps and he's looking much better too. He has to take aspirin for the next two months to make sure his heart doesn't have any residual issues, and he has at least one follow-up with a cardiologist coming up, but he should be fine and after the aspirin we should be home-free.

Like I said, the main feeling of this experience has just been gratitude. I was so grateful that our pediatrician caught this. So grateful that the doctors at the hospital dealt with this frequently and knew what to do. So grateful that the hospital was only across the street from Tommy's work! And that his boss was so flexible and told him not to worry about work the whole time we were there. So grateful for Kristin Myres watching Graham for two days for us so Tommy and I could both be there when Dane needed us. So grateful for modern medicine at all and that we don't live 200 years ago for Dane to have his heart damaged from this disease that would have affected his health for the rest of his life. So grateful that Dane was such a champ and never complained about being stuck in the hospital for days. So grateful that Kawasaki is not a chronic thing--it's over and done with and we won't have to worry about it any more, knock on wood. We had about five people bring us meals once they found out about Dane--so we were so grateful for all of the support here, and I was getting texts and calls from people all over the world asking how Dane was doing and telling us they were praying for him.

We LOVE our Dane boy.