The day after our anniversary adventure, Jeb seemed to be feeling a little off, he didn't eat much breakfast and was really glum looking. By mid afternoon he still refused to eat or drink and looked awful, so I figured he was dehydrated and took him to the local urgent care to be checked out. They did a couple of tests and said that he definitely is dehydrated, but they aren't experienced with children, so they sent us off to Children's Hospital. Eric dropped Jeb and I off and kept the girls with him, and we got checked in, and had some more tests done. Nothing had come back conclusive but because he was so dehydrated with a high fever, they wanted to keep him overnight. He got an IV for fluids and an antibiotic, and we watched the same Dora the Explorer movie 4 times while we waited for a room to open up. Jeb mostly slept, but wanted the movie on, since movies are a special treat.
Because they thought he had a virus but weren't sure what it was, we ended up in a private room, which was so nice! Eric had taken the girls to his parents for dinner and to play, then went home to pick up a change of clothes for me and some things to do. Jeb slept most of the night, but had perked up just a little the next morning. He got to see a big group of student doctors when the rounding doctor came in to talk to us. He asked Jeb how he was feeling and when Jeb weakly said "good", all of the female students said "awwww!" He got spoiled by the nurses who tried to take some blood but couldn't get it and had to start all over again with a new vein. They promised him toys and he made sure they kept their promise.
At breakfast time I told him how the menu works, and suggested some breakfast foods he usually likes. He shook his head and said he only wanted soup. Luckily they make everything on the menu at all times of the day, so he got his chicken noodle soup. I also ordered him some scrambled eggs with cheese and a banana, 2 of his favorites, and some juice. Then we turned on the tv and he watched some PBS shows. The benefit of having an older child in the hospital-he let me leave for a few minutes to run to the cafeteria and get some breakfast for myself. My one big complaint about Children's Hospital is that they don't feed the parents, if we want to eat we either have to leave our kids to go get food, or leave our kids to go buy vouchers so we can order off the menu.When the food came, he tasted the soup, tasted the eggs, then asked me to put the eggs in the soup. I did, and he ate a lot of it. A little weird, but it got him to eat!
The nurses were all super nice, and Jeb was beginning to regain some strength and start to really enjoy his stay in the hospital. He started walking to the bathroom by himself, pushing his IV cart in front of him, and figured out the controls that make the bed go up and down, which he did over, and over, and over :) A library cart came by with some books for kids and magazines for moms, and she told us that we could go to the hospital library and borrow books and dvds. After lunch, Jeb perked up even more and was able to walk down to the library. He picked a couple of movies, and when we got back, he was delighted to find that someone had switched his plain white pillow case for a brightly colored one with pictures of vehicles, animals, and toys on it while we were gone. Later that afternoon, we went down to return our movies, and get some new ones, and around that time we were also informed that they still didn't know what was wrong with him, so they wanted him to stay for another day or 2. He did not like to hear that, and was getting really antsy, climbing around on the bed and examining his IV to see how to unhook it. He wanted to go home.
Eric and the girls came up to visit again and they all piled on the bed to watch the movie that was on. With his sisters there, he started acting like his normal self, and we decided to push the doctors a little to get them to let us out. The first guy was going to make us sign AMA forms, but then he reported back to his boss who said it wasn't that big of a deal, we could go home with our prescription for an antibiotic.
The next few days, we took it easy, but he was pretty much his normal self by the next day. He has been fine since, and after getting the call from the hospital that it was a bacteria that made him sick, we have been working harder on not touching things that we don't need to touch (public floors, toilets, etc) washing our hands when we touch those things, and not putting our hands near our face. With the power being out that week and the temperature hovering around 100, we had been to every germ infested child play place in town, so I'm sure he picked it up at one of those places. So gross! But we all survived, and we're hoping to finish out the summer without any more hospitalizations! I say summer because Journey does have a hospital stay in October to monitor her for seizures. But no surprise visits!
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