our youngest son, hudson, has not had the easiest life so far in terms of health issues. he's had many ear/sinus infections, he was hospitalized twice for breathing issues and he had a calcium deposit on his skull a few weeks after he was born (due to the use of the vacuum to get him out). on top of all that, he is now, has always been, and apparently always will be a terrible sleeper, even when he's not sick.
so it was not much of a surprise two weeks ago when he started crying out again throughout the night. he had gone probably a solid month sleeping soundly and we thought we had finally turned the page on this brutal, energy zapping chapter. this most recent bout we had chalked up to his teething. he was getting all four of his top front teeth at the same time and appeared to be getting a set of molars too. he had no other symptoms, so we assumed that was it. he had also been running a very low grade fever all week, which is sometimes a symptom of teething. as the week went on and he was waking up about every half hour, we started to think maybe it was another ear infection.
my wife took him to the doctor on friday, where he got a clean bill of health on his ears and sinuses. we were almost hoping for an infection so that we'd have a concrete reason why he wasn't sleeping. she told us to give him teething tablets and orajel, which we had already been doing, for the pain. the doc said his liver was a bit swollen, but that it wasn't alarming and we should come back in a few weeks to make sure it was fine.
fast forward to monday morning. hudson woke up with a slightly higher fever and out of nowhere, wouldn't put any weight on his right arm. it wasn't swollen or discolored, but it was obviously hurting him and he wouldn't use it at all. thinking that maybe he slept on it wrong or had hit his funny bone, we gave him a bit of motrin and sent him to school.
of course, his fever went up at daycare and we were called to come get him. they also noted that his arm was giving him fits, so we knew it wasn't caused by sleeping on it.
my wife took him back to the doctor, where they sent him across the street to the hospital for a blood draw and an x-ray on his arm. at this point, the doctor was wanting to rule out mono, as it had been going around area daycares (and could have been causing the fever etc.). she also wanted to check his liver enzymes since his liver was still swollen. obviously the x-ray was to tell us if he'd broken his lil' arm.
the blood test came back pretty quickly and showed no mono, no liver problems, and a slightly elevated white cell count, meaning he was fighting something. the x-ray showed something possibly going on in his elbow, but it wasn't clear yet.
my wife and i split the day at home with him tuesday and i took him back for his follow-up x-ray on just his elbow. of course he cried and screamed when they had to hold him still. his fever was still high and he was just miserable.
i forgot to mention that i had just started a new job and my wife had just begun reporting to a new boss. neither of us were in a position to comfortably miss a lot of work, which is exactly what we were looking at.
the elbow x-ray came back negative, natch. by now his hand was pretty swollen, a bit red, and hot to the touch. the doctor started suggesting things like a bone infection. they also thought it was maybe a bug bite, but you couldn't see any bite marks and it didn't respond to benedryl.
luckily, my mother-in-law, who was a HUGE savior during all this, was able to stay with him wednesday. they called him back AGAIN to the hospital for an x-ray on just his hand and more blood work. the reason for the multiple blood draws is that we had been seeing two doctors for all of this. sometimes hudson's primary doctor isn't in and we have to see the on-call doctor. of course the doctors weren't talking to each other much and when one would order a test, the other wanted a different test that wasn't run. all the while, poor hudson's fever wouldn't go away and you couldn't even think about touching his right hand. dressing him and getting him in a car seat were great fun for all of us.
at this point, he had been running fever for over a week, with three or four days of fairly high fever. his white blood cell count went up between monday and wednesday, which the doctors didn't care for one bit. i turned to google, which is not your friend when trying to diagnose medical issues. i remembered reading about childhood leukemia and white blood cell counts, so after reading the symptoms, i was convinced for about ten minutes that he had that. further down the page, other symptoms pretty much ruled it out, but it was still in the back of my mind. when looking up a bone infection, i found that if that were the case, he'd probably have to have surgery to help repair it.
wednesday's x-ray was clean too, so it wasn't a break. next would be a bone scan to check ligaments and tissue.
thursday was my day to stay home with him and we went back to our favorite hang-out, the doctor's office, where hudson was catheterized. if you've never been privy to a little baby getting a tube shoved up his unit, let me tell you that it is way up there in Fun Ways To Spend An Afternoon. i had to deal with it with our older boy too and i'm happy to report that it is still just as pleasant three years later.
to top it off, no piss came out. none. bone dry. pushing on the bladder, etc. yielded nothing. i sat and talked with both doctors (since they were finally both in the office) and went over possible outcomes of the bone scan. they pretty much narrowed it down to a bone infection, arthritis, or some random infection that settled in his hand and could potentially be in his heart. awesome, thought i; heart problems. they said if the bone scan came back clean, we'd go to a cardiologist. as it were, we couldn't get in for the bone scan that day, but got it scheduled for friday morning first thing.
they taped a little baggy on his junk and sent us home. the baggy came off during his nap, so no urine would be had that day.
have i mentioned yet that during this week, hudson was still waking up screaming about every half hour from 9 pm until 4 am? so add sleep deprivation to our overall stress levels, which were already in the red due to (1) undiagnosed sick infant who possibly has cancer or a heart infection, and (2) getting fired from our jobs for missing so much work.
at the doctor's office thursday, while they were still trying to get us in for a bone scan, they said that hudson would have to go two hours with no food and only clear liquids. when the scan fell through, i mentally retained that two hour guidance. friday morning, his scan was supposed to start around 10, so we gave him milk at 6:30, thinking it was well outside of the two hour window. wrong. on my way into work friday morning, i had a call on my cell from the anesthesiologist saying that he couldn't eat past midnight.
when my wife got there with hudson, she told them about the 6:30 milk and they basically pulled the plug on the whole show, which is where in the story my wife lost it. she broke down crying and called me in that state. i told her to call the doctor's office and see if they could pull some strings. for the next few hours, they basically said that there was no way the scan was happening that day, but that they'd try for sat. this was memorial day weekend, so tuesday was a very real possibility. yes, day nine of his hand & fever issue.
thankfully, for our sanity and our boy's health, the doctor's office was somehow able to call in a favor and the scan happened late friday. hudson couldn't eat all day and it showed in the poor lil' guy's behavior.
the scan showed an infection in the tissue, rather than the bone of his hand, which was the only outcome that wasn't bad. needless to say, we were very relieved, especially when his blood did not show the same infection, meaning it hadn't spread anywhere, including his heart.
he was given an antibiotic shot and a script for ten days of an oral antibiotic. the swelling went down after about two days and he started sleeping better after about four. my wife's mom stayed with us every night over the memorial day weekend so that we could catch up on sleep. trust me when i tell you that that was the best gift i've ever been given, period.
so we're slowly getting him back to a routine of daycare and health. i'm still not 100% convinced that it wasn't a bug bite, but no matter what, we're all very happy that it's nothing serious.