Hospitalized and Released

As many of you know, we were hospitalized again Sunday night for a urinary tract infection. Saturday Chris and I dropped the boys off at Grandma and Grandpa's house while we attended a class. As we were about to leave Joaquin had to go to the bathroom. I had already left the house to get in the car but when Chris joined me out there he said Joaquin had complained about it hurting to pee. Oh great, I thought to myself. A few hours later my Mom called and said that Joaquin was running a fever. So we took him to urgent care but the renal doctors wanted some blood work done and I knew the urgent care wouldn't get the results back for a few days so we decided to take him down to the ER instead.

They did a urine analysis as well as a blood culture, urine culture, and blood chemistry. The urine analysis showed some leukocytes - meaning a possible infection - so they gave him two shots of a strong antibiotic in both his legs and sent us on our way telling us that we would have to come back for the next two days to repeat the antibiotics.

In the morning Joaquin woke up and was still running a fever. Although we have been told by the doctors that it can take up to 48 hours for the antibiotics to kick in I still didn't feel good about the situation so we called the doctors again. They wanted us to go down to the ER again to be seen by a physician as well as get his second dose of antibiotics. This time they opted to put an IV in since he was still complaining of pains in his legs where the first shots were given. They also needed to do another blood draw so putting the IV in would allow them to draw blood as well as administer the antibiotics without the pain in the legs.

We left and went back to my parents' house. A little later we get a call from the doctors in Palo Alto saying that they want to admit him to the hospital down there. Chris put his foot down and said that it would be hard on our family and wondered if they couldn't just do the same thing at the hospital in Reno. The doctors would have liked to see him first hand but agreed that he could be admitted to the hospital in Reno. So we went to Renown to check in.

We had to wait over 72 hours for the urine cultures to come back and tell us exactly what type of bug we were dealing with in his urine. In the meantime they were giving him a strong antibiotic called vancomyacin (I may have misspelled that). This drug was supposed to cover about 90% of bugs or bacteria. The only down side is that it can be toxic to the kidneys in too high of doses. So they were needing to check the levels of drug in his system before every other time the drug was administered. For some reason or another, the doctors were not able to get their poop in a group and one day they kept forgetting blood draw orders they wanted to get and so he was stuck 3 times. When the nurse came in to tell us that they were going to draw another time for something else Chris said, "No, you're not. He's had 3 sticks already today. You can get it in the morning." He said it with absolutely no attitude. The nurse was a little shocked but agreed. She said that she might be able to draw it out of his IV, which she was able to.

Finally the culture came back and we were able to identify exactly what type of antibiotics it was sensitive too. And after that his fever went down and stayed away. The renal doctors wanted him to be a-febrile (or fever free) for 24 hours. His last temp was Tuesday night at 8:30 p.m. but the renal doctors had him stay overnight anyway.

It was so nice this time to have my parents able to help us. My Dad would stay overnight so that Chris could go to work and I was able to take care of Sage. My Mom would bring Sage with her in the morning and so after my Dad would leave it would just be me and Joaquin - so I was able to give him special attention. We just had such a great system worked out. I am so thankful.

I just want to express again how thankful I am for all the thoughts and prayers sent our way. After I sent the email I could literally feel them. Thank you.

VCUG And Biopsy Update

This time we did make it over the mountain, although there was a point in the journey, right as we crossed the pass near Donner Lake where I was having flash back from our previous attempt since there were snow showers. That morning Sage and woken up with a runny nose and Chris had been complaining for a few days of sore throat. When I picked Chris up from work that day we left he sounded awful. I was concerned about taking us all down there. I was feeling fine and Joaquin appeared fine but since the whole family wasn't healthy it did make me concerned especially since we would be around people whose children were also immuno-compromised like Joaquin. I know how I feel when I hear a kid cough even though most of the time once the symptoms appear the contagiousness has passed. But we pressed forward.

We arrived at the hotel in the late evening, we should have been there earlier but we were thisclose to being involved in a car accident in the freeway. It was a route we had never taken before where Chris thought we could avoid the tolls and wind up almost exactly in the place where our hotel was. Anyway, we witnessed a two car accident that took place right in front of us. It was scary but we were unharmed as well as our car. As we settle into our hotel room Joaquin starts in with a cough. He'd been having some nasal drainage so I thought maybe he was just clearing his throat but at the night when on it kept going.

In the morning the cough was not gone. We headed to the hospital since we had an 8:15 a.m. VCUG appointment scheduled. We were a little late getting there so we had to wait a little bit before Joaquin's name was called. The day before I had called the Child Life Specialists at our nurses' request in order to prepare Joaquin for the procedure. So before we did anything we went into this room with the CL lady and she pulled out all these toys that were small replicas of all the real equipment that would be used. Joaquin was vaguely interested. I think it prepared me more than him. I think it honestly made him a little nervous having it all spelled out for him and having everyone make a big deal out of it. The CL lady set up a Thomas the Train video for him to watch while they were doing the VCUG. Believe it or not he had never seen Thomas the Train so he was very interested and he stayed still for most of it but he did experience a little pain. The procedure itself only took about 10-15 minutes total. They cathed him and then filled up his bladder with a dye and took pictures with an x-ray machine. During the procedure the doctor did comment that there was a little reflux but I didn't ask any questions as we had a clinic appointment next so I would be able to ask more there.

After we were finished we had about an hour and a half before we had to be at our pre-biopsy clinic. We walked around the Stanford campus which is beautiful. We arrived at our clinic appointment and had a bit of a wait before we could be seen by our nurse. In mean time they gave Joaquin a little mask to wear since he was coughing. When we were seen by our nurse she said that she couldn't say for sure but that we would probably have to cancel the biopsy since he was coughing and they don't like to put kids under anestesia when they have any kind of upper respiratory stuff going on.

We ended up waiting to be seen for two hours! Towards the end we were all cranky and tired. But finally we did get to see Dr. Grimm who told us that the VCUG study showed a little reflux but not enough to do anything about. He thinks it has to do with Joaquin potty learning and just recognizing when he has to go to the bath room and learning to completely his bladder. Apparently the bladder only refluxes part way up the ureter so it doesn't even go into the kidney. Good news! Dr. Grimm also confirmed that we would not be doing the biopsy. He looked at Joaquin and said, "Hmmm, what would I do if he were my kid. No, I wouldn't do it." I agreed. I want Joaquin to be completely healthy so that everything has a better chance of going smoothly. So we left clinic, checked out of our hotel room and left for home.

So Joaquin is still fighting his cold which is largely in his chest. Chris has the same thing and Sage has a baby-version of the cold, which probably has to do with the fact that he's still breastfeeding and therefore has some of my antibodies. I had a little bit of a chest cold a while back but I seem to have escaped the big one that the boys are fighting. We are waiting for Joaquin to get better before we make the next appointment.

Sorry there are no pictures this time. I'll be sure to upload and post some soon.