Day by Day

A mama blogs the journey to transplant and beyond...

Thursday, March 26, 2009

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.

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