a pound plus lighter

No pictures for this post - sorry! This is one of those, "I have to get this down for posterity's sake" sort of entries. One day I am eventually going to print out all these entries and have a fairly nice blog book/journal from the past couple of years!

So, on Sunday Emmy was acting really lethargic because he hadn't had a whole lot to drink since his surgery and he was running a fever. He was dehydrated and his sore throat made it to where he didn't want to drink. And being a baby, he's awfully hard to reason with sometimes! He was on Loritab and Tylenol, but he wouldn't eat or drink anything. We had already bribed him with juice boxes, juice bags, milk, ice cream, popsicles, soda, and we even took him out on Saturday night to Sonic to tempt him with a slushy! We tried straws, cups, sippy cups, all his favorites. Nothing worked, though. So after debating with myself for a long while, I decided to take him in to the ER to get a quick IV pick-me-up. We called around to find a hospital that would be able to put the IV in - we've learned from past experiences that he is very hard to place IVs in. They just opened a Primary Children's Extension at the Riverton Hospital, so we decided to go there.

I grabbed the diaper bag and Emmy (we had come home from church because he wasn't feeling well) and picked the kids up from church and headed up north. I dropped the other kids at my BIL's house for a couple hours while we pumped him full of fluids, thinking it was going to be cut and dry. Three hours later, they still hadn't been able to place an IV and Emmy was so wore out that he had stopped crying when they poked and prodded and pushed on him.

The first poke had gone straight in and he hadn't even flinched, Then his blood started gushing out onto the nurses hands and the table because she had accidentally put it in an artery instead of a vein. 15 minutes later they took it out and started the pin cushion routine with him.

I was in tears, along with my exhausted Emmy by poke number 7, and they finally called down NICU nurses after poke #9. Oddly enough, I had told then that no one but NICU nurses have ever been able to get a line in right when we got there. I tried to set them up for success, but I think they took it as insults and saw it as a challenge... that they, 'regular' nurses, would do what no other regular nurse had been able to do before. It even took the NICU nurse two pokes before she got a line to stay and not rupture. He had already lost more than a pound of weight since his surgery, so getting fluids in him a must.

After our 3 hour IV placement ordeal, they started a rapid infusion - to just push fluids quickly. An hour later, he was still motionless and they slowed it down to a more steady rate. We stayed there for another couple of hours with the fever still haunting him and no improvement in his energy, so they transferred him up to Primary Children's Hospital in SLC. (Word to the wise, when they transfer you from one ER to another ER, you still have to pay co-pays at both places- very not cool in my book.)

Up at Primary's, he was placed in a Rapid Treatment Unit, which is pretty much a longer term ER room. There you can stay for observation and treatment for 24-48 hours without having to be admitted into the hospital. There they kept him on morphine throughout the night with a constant fluid drip. He still didn't drink anything and slept most of the night, only waking occasionally when his pain got to be too much. Then they would come in and give him something and he would be able to go back to sleep.

Monday lunch time-ish, he finally woke up and they stopped his drip to see if he would be able to hydrate himself. We tried all sorts of flavors and textures again, all with the same results I had had at home. Around dinnertime though, I ordered him a scrambled egg, diced cooked carrots, and a fruit smoothie, and he ate the whole egg! He started acting like he had a little more energy, so around 9 that night, I told them that I could do at home everything they were doing there, and they released him. He still hadn't been drinking a lot, so I was told to watch him for signs of dehydration again. He was going to be sent home with his IV in place, just in case we had to bring him back for another bag, but at the last moment it was taken out because it was leaking at the puncture point. We went back to my BIL's to get the kids, and we were home a little before 11pm...36 hours after we had left the day before for a 'quick drink'.

He's done okay at home. Yesterday went well, he drank 6.5 ounces and had energy to play and be sort of normal. We kept him on Loritab for the pain thinking that if his pain was under control that he might start drinking. We finally learned a trick right before bed time to get him to drink a little. We filled a syringe up with juice and he got to squirt it into his mouth. He likes the cold juice on the back of his throat.

Today he's drank about 8 ounces, and he needs 13 ounces to maintain healthy hydration so we're about half of that mark...but we're up from the days before! He's only had two wet diapers today, which is a worrisome sign, but we'll see what tomorrow brings. If his trend keeps up, he'll be drinking more tomorrow and all will be well! That's what I'm banking on!