Fever

On February 6th I took Addy for her bi-weekly check up at Columbus. She had started having a runny nose the weekend before and Wednesday morning developed a fever. When we got to Columbus she was up to 101 degrees. After seeing Dr. Kahn and Dr. Potter, they thought it would be best if they admitted Addy so they could determine what was causing the fever. They gave Addy a dose of Motrin to help with the fever and by the time we were in our room, her fever was gone. They still ran blood tests and we had to wait 24 hours for the blood cultures to grow something. They found that it was rhinovirus, the common cold. Since it is a virus, there was nothing to do for it other than let it run its course. The good news was we only had to stay in the hospital one night.

She continued to have the cold symptoms for two weeks and then a little a week over on the 16th, she started a fever. The hospital doesn't consider it a fever until it reaches 100.4 and she was only at 99. She also had teeth coming in so we just thought that was the culprit. Monday the 18th though Addy ran a fever throughout the night and at one time it reached 102. After talking to Dr. Kahn, she asked us to come to the ER at Children's. At 4:00 we left for the hospital. They drew blood cultures right away and then decided to admit us once again. They went ahead and put her on antibiotics in case it was a bacterial infection. I headed home Monday night so that I could go to work and Pat and Addy stayed at the hospital. It was the first night I had ever spent a night away from Addy and I was heartbroken, but I knew Pat  would take good care of her.

Wednesday they did a CT scan of her stomach because it had become very hard. It showed that there was fluid in her belly and also her intestinal walls were swollen. They stopped feeding her and she was only hooked up to IV fluid. They hoped this would help push out the fluid quickly.

When Addy was not responding to what Columbus was trying, they transported her to Pittsburgh by ambulance Thursday night. She was not a happy camper because she was so hungry. Friday morning the doctors came in to talk to us and wanted to do an ultrasound of her abdomen and also put in a PICC line so that her antibiotics and blood draws could be done through that rather than her hand IV's.