I can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since my last entry! Actually, it's not hard to believe considering what the past 2 weeks have been like for us. It's been CRAZY around here!
I left off with Kaeli getting the stomach bug. She missed Tue and Wed from school. Went back to school on Thursday, but came home complaining that her tummy was cramping again. No school on Friday because of an in-service day so she got to stay home and try to recuperate.
Thursday night Ryan woke up vomiting. He got hit HARD!! The poor kid had no idea what was going on. He continued to throw up all night long. I did lots of laundry through the night and slept on the floor next to his bed (when I got a few minutes to actually sleep).
Of course then Friday morning AJ wakes up vomiting!
Saturday was pretty tough to get through since everyone was VERY sick and Steve had to work. But, we survived! By Saturday night things were looking up. I actually thought we had made it through the worst part.
UNTIL.....Kaeli came to my room at around 4AM limping and said her leg was hurting really bad. She pointed to her upper thigh and I assumed it was probably just a muscle cramp. I gave her some Tylenol and put her back in bed. I was slightly worried as I drifted back to sleep because she did start pointing to her groin area when I asked her again where exactly it hurt. But, I thought "what's the worst it could be?". Maybe some soreness in her lymph nodes or just cramping from dehydration. Around 7AM Paige came to our room to tell us Kaeli couldn't even get out of bed. She was in some serious pain. She said she couldn't even move her leg because it hurt so bad. I reluctantly put a call in to the on-call ped. I felt a little silly for calling about a hurt leg, but I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't just let her lay in bed and suffer without me trying to do something. The on-call Dr told me to take her to the ER at the Children's Hospital. Based on my description of her symptoms he was concerned she could have a joint infection. This is when I realized her hurt leg could be a serious condition.
We finally made it to the ER around 10:30 or 11:00 and our day just went downhill from there. The wait was sooooo long and Kaeli was getting pretty irritable. Her aunt Kristen was in town and everyone else was at Mom-mom's house having a party for Kristen. Kaeli had been looking forward to this day all week and she was EXTREMELY disappointed! Also, by now Kaeli has missed lunch. A bored, crabby, disappointed, hungry, and thirsty 7 yr old is NOT very good company! She was not allowed to eat, though, because they weren't sure what was wrong with her.
After answering a gazillion questions a gazillion different times the tests started. First thing they did was an x-ray. The attending Dr said that unfortunately they didn't see anything on xray. So, from there they had to do a blood culture and various other blood tests. The concern was that she could either have a joint infection or a blood infection. Her tests came back showing a high WBC count and two different tests for inflammation came back high. Kaeli was passed off from the attending ER Dr to an Orthopedic surgeon (yeah, that made me a little nervous). Two different ortho Dr's looked at her and her lab results. After consulting with each other, they determined she needed to be admitted for overnight observation. Because the WBC count was high they couldn't completely rule out an infection. Overnight they gave her anti-inflammatory IV meds. By morning she was a different kid!! She had some pain left in the leg, but she could at least move it and could put a little bit of weight on the leg. I was so incredibly relieved by her improvement. If she hadn't improved so much they were going to put her under anesthesia and use a needle to aspirate some of the fluid. WHEW!!
We were finally released from the hospital Monday afternoon. Kaeli and I were thrilled! Kaeli said she always thought it would be cool to stay at a hospital. But, after this experience she has changed her mind. She said they kept waking her up all night long. LOL Also, she said she was mad at the Dr's. They were supposed to be making her feel better, but instead they kept moving her leg all around and it made her leg hurt even more! Although I have to say she was real trooper when it came to the Dr's moving her leg. She was trying not to complain and would keep smiling as they tried to move her leg. They could feel the resistance in her movement and would finally say "is this hurting?". Through a clenched smile she'd say "yes" in a really cheerful voice!! I was laughing because when I even touched her she'd scream out in agony!
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