Hospital Fiasco...with pictures

The kids are asleep!!! I better write this before they wake up in 3 seconds. I think I just heard Jared say, "Yeah right, mom. You better come get me right now." This will be long and descriptive....so I understand if you don't last through the whole thing. First off, huge thank you to all the prayers and love. We were truly amazed at how sweet and helpful everyone was! 

Hopefully I can get my days right since they all kind of blur together. 

Last week was a nightmare. Seriously, a parental nightmare followed by no sleeping and nightmares. Then followed with some sleeping accompanied with nightmares. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my entire life. 

Claire starting running a fever on Monday night. We noticed it right around dinner time. She was acting normally, but she was so hot! I had Brian go get an ear thermometer because I HATE sitting there for a minute or more waiting for the crappy underarm or even rectal thermometer to get an accurate reading. Seriously, it was the best investment of our year. The underarm temp was around 101.3 where the ear was 103.5. Kind of a huge difference, I would say. We stuck her in the tub immediately to get her temperature down and started to wait out the night. At 2 am she was running a 104.5 temperature and we took her in to the ER. I couldn't sleep. I felt so bad that I couldn't go and I was worried of the outcome because I felt like something was really wrong. When Brian called at 2 saying that she was just fine and it was probably respiratory, there was a sigh of relief, but it was an uneasy one. The rest of the night Claire continued to sweat and cook every single ounce of fluid in her body.

Morning came and the poor girl was still cookin'. I had her on the couch watching Dora and trying to get her to eat/drink anything. She finally ate some cheerios, so I was relieved that she was getting a little food and a little cold milk. Well, after she finished her rather large bowl of Cheerios, she started to shiver and turn a little blue. She was freezing. I tried warming her up or just trying to hold her. Then I tried to give her a warm bottle hoping it would warm her up from the inside. I looked over to check on Jared and then back to Claire and in that second she went from my sweet, poor, shivering Claire to the scariest thing I've ever seen. I'm sorry to parents who have had their kids have seizures or seen worse because to me this was horrifying. Her eyes were rolling all over in the back of her head, her body was convulsing all over the place, foaming at the mouth, turning blue, trying to breathe but it came out as more of a grunt. Of course I screamed and did exactly what I should not have done....I picked her up and yelled at her. Then I grabbed the phone and called 911. They assured me that she would be ok as long as she was breathing, but she was still turning blue. I wonder if she was choking on the milk she was drinking, so I flung her over my shoulder and patted her back. Color returned...thank goodness...and she could breathe a little better although it was still the scary kind of sound. Still on the phone with 911 as they were giving me instructions of how to get her through the convulsing and then the jack-knifing followed by the extreme exhaustion. Two to three minutes never seemed longer. 

The EMT's got there and determined an ER visit was necessary with a 106.5 temperature after a seizure, so Brian took her in the ambulance (thank goodness he called after the 911 call and rushed home) while I frantically got Jared to the ER. I beat them there actually. All the doctors told me that it's super normal to have a febrile seizure and that she would be just fine. I guess that helped as much as a drip of water would a flower, but I guess it was something. They finally got there and all she would say was "Daddy". Not lying, I thought she didn't know who I was and I almost burst into (more) tears. After a CT scan, X-ray, and hours of sitting there, her fever went down and they told us we could go home after they gave her an antibiotic. We were trying to get a urine sample, but she wouldn't pee. *Remember how I said she cooked all remaining fluids from the night before? Yeah. Still the case. I kept telling them to give her fluids since she already had an IV site, but they assured me that the TINY antibiotic bag would do the trick. Alright....    Still no bathroom break. No urine culture either. Antibiotic administered and therefore killing all for sure signs that it was a UTI. Thanks ER doctors. 

Claire exhausted in the ER

She HAD to have Bo. She screamed his name before mine. Nice to know where I fit in. :) He even had to have a washing in between hospital visits because they got blood on him when taking out her IV.

We were then sent home. She was exhausted and slept for quite some time. We got her up for her next dose of Tylenol/Motrin and she was, once again, on fire. Brian called the after-hours clinic, told them what was going on and that we would like to avoid brain damaging temperatures, so they said we could go in. At 9 pm, at the doctor's, her temp was 104.5 again. The doctor said there was nothing we could do, just to have it run it's course. I asked how likely she was to have another seizure and he said, "Just the same as any other kid with a high fever" looking confident that it wouldn't happen. I knew it was just a matter of time before another one was coming and I was trying to avoid that. It was terrifying enough to see one and I certainly didn't want to see my little girl like that again. So we went home angry and went to sleep by my mother's orders.

We woke up to my mom yelling Brian's name at 11:45 telling us she was having another. 911 call again. EMT's again. Whole seizure description...again. She wasn't as tired after the second and seemed a little more responsive, but even the EMT's usually don't have repeat seizure offenders on the same day. By doctor's orders we were to stay home and just make sure she acted normally. I was uneasy...we all were. The waste of time doctor's visit turned out to be a miracle in disguise because he called back saying it "wasn't sitting quite right" and we should get to the ER. Thank goodness. We went and I almost demanded that she get an IV and some fluids right away. Through the whole screaming of getting an IV in she had ONE small tear. Just one. By the time the bag was empty she had finally broken a sweat. I asked for another IV and they said, "Oh, she'll be good with that for 24 hours." Okay... 

All while eavesdropping on the ER doctor on the phone with our pediatrician.... We were going to be sent home, but Dr. Adams said he would like us admitted so she could be monitored. Thank goodness for that "waste of time" doctor visit. We sat in the ER from 1-6 am that time. Finally admitted I had some piece of mind. Wednesday was spent taking her temperature ALL. THE. TIME. and putting cold packs on my poor little girl's shivering body. I have to say that she was a dream patient though. She would take her meds willingly and didn't even care too much about the cold compresses until we'd change them. She didn't like the initial cold, but did great while it was on her. We had to do these almost ever 3 hours since her temperature would rise and quickly get higher, so we had to get her down really quickly. 

I didn't want to leave her side, but we hadn't slept in two days. My mom came down and had us go home to rest. We went home and sobbed. Showered. Sobbed some more. I slept for about 45 minutes, but every time I closed my eyes I would see her little face, eyes rolled back and it scared me again. It was hard to sleep. When we went back to the hospital, Claire was bouncing off the walls. Her IV had come out by accident earlier that day, so we were hoping that all that energy and no IV was a good sign; however, without the IV her temperature started to go up again. We had to hold her down, screaming for her third IV. She started to do better after it was HEAVILY taped down again. 

I think, pretty sure it was Thursday we took her off of her Tylenol/Motrin 3 hour schedule to see if the fever would come back. Her IV was also cut in half to see if we were masking that fever so we could know if she could handle it on her own. At 5 pm she ran another fever, so we had another dose of Tylenol and one more dose of Motrin before attempting again. This time we did not do cold packs just to see if the medication alone would bring down her fever. I was a basket case the hole time. I'll be honest, there were a couple of times where I would just look at her and burst into tears...which would then make her cry, so I had to keep it together. She also had a kidney/bladder ultrasound. They found some gunk in her bladder, which is typical for a UTI, but of course they couldn't for sure say anything since she had antibiotics administered before her urine was cultured (thank you ER). She screamed through the entire ultrasound. Finally, after 11 pm we took her off of the meds again and her fever never came back. THANK GOODNESS!  We monitored her through the night. She was bouncing OFF THE WALLS....literally. Finally at 2 am, Brian woke me up saying he was too exhausted to watch her and it was my turn. The magic trick was lying in bed with mommy and a bottle of milk. Zonked. She was exhausted. We were discharged the next day. 

Still on edge at home, we took her temperature every hour...no fever thank goodness. She did throw up that night, but we think it might be because she ate too much after not having eaten for 3 days. Who knows. She's still pretty pale and we are all exhausted and are still trying to make a sleep recovery, but we are incredibly grateful that our little girl is okay and that it had the outcome that we were hoping for! 

Claire got to watch A LOT of Dora/Tangled/and Nemo 

Who knew Jared could sleep through the night. That ended the night we got home. Stinker. He was a champ!!!

In the playroom! A nice break from her crib.

Content to be paid attention to.

Mr. Potato head. So fun. We now own one.

If it weren't for my mom, I don't think we would have made it through the week. She is still catching up on sleep as well, but I was so grateful she was there! 

Sleep smile caught on camera!

Smiling at mommy.

Leaving the hospital in a wagon! So fun!

Her good girl reward. We're playing with Mr. Potatohead's accessories. They look better on him.

Lastly, Uncle Jason was also able to visit a much healthier Claire and see little Jared. It was good to have an great end to an awful week!

 Disclaimer: I'm not proofreading this, so sorry for any mistakes. :)