Friday, April 30, 2010

The epic virus


So the weekend that started out so awesome ended very, very less than awesome! I had a class at 8am on Saturday back in San Antonio (along with an hour and a half drive) so I got up early to make it back.
I went to class and then called mom during break to check on Bradyn. Mom said he was really, really sick. He had been throwing up since about seven am and wasn’t showing any signs of stopping. When I got home it was apparent that she was not exaggerating. We spent the day taking turns. She would hold him until he threw up on her, I would clean things up, I would take him so that she could go get cleaned up, by the time she was clean he would have thrown up on me so the cycle started again. If he weren’t so sad and miserable it would have been comical. We were trying to give him small amounts of water as often as possible but he just kept throwing up. 

That evening, I started getting worried about his seizure meds because he still wasn’t keeping anything down and that would be two doses that he hadn’t absorbed. I called his doctor and he called in a prescription to try and slow down the vomiting. I left B and mom at home and I ran to the pharmacy. When I got there it was madness, cars everywhere, people everywhere. I stood in line for about 20 minutes attempting to think positive thoughts and not get carried away with worry. When I finally got to the front of the line the tech told me that it would be a 3 hour wait for the medicine. I tried to respond calmly but calm sounded more like a frantic strangled scream as I immediately started crying and told her that I needed the medicine in order to stop my son from throwing up and hopefully help him avoid a seizure. She calmly and dismissively told me to go sit down and she would see what she could do. 45 minutes later I had the meds and was on my way. (Thank you Walgreens pharmacy tech for taking pity on me and helping me get home as fast as possible!)

I got home just as Kyle and Greg were getting home from Austin. YAY more grown up hands! We gave B the meds and crossed our fingers. He didn’t completely stop throwing up but he did slow down. He was able to take his seizure meds, some Tylenol, drink some water and get a little bit of sleep. He continued like that all night and all of Sunday. Mom left on Sunday, she didn’t really want to, she felt like she should stay but in the end decided to go home so that she could make it to work on Monday. We were up most of the night on Sunday night and on Monday morning I called his doctor and scheduled an appointment for that afternoon. Kyle stayed home with B and I went into the office to get a bit of work done. When I got home at noon he looked a lot better, Kyle and I even had a conversation about “should we take him to the doctor or should we let him rest at home and continue to recover?”. In the end we decided to keep the appointment. He has rallied like that in the past, he starts acting normal and we think “oh wow, he’s all better” then we cancel an appointment and all of the sudden all hell breaks loose.

And that’s exactly what happened this time. He fell asleep watching TV, I went to wake him up to get him ready to go to the doctor and he started seizing and seizing. It lasted 5 minutes. Actually based on when we stopped and started timing it lasted 6 minutes but I am subtracting a minute because I think the last minute he was coming out but I was too freaked out to stop the clock. He has NEVER has a seizure that lasted that long before. It was absolutely terrifying! We bundled him up and drove to the doctor. They took us right back to an exam room, took one look at him and told us we were going to the hospital. His doctor called ahead and direct admitted us so we didn’t have to go to the emergency room and the hospital is right across the street so he was in a room about 40 minutes later.

The next few days are a blur of tests and IVs and sleep and no sleep and trying to figure out how to manage work and responsibilities and be there for Bradyn. I spent the majority of his stay curled up in his bed with him. He was a little trooper, he put up with the blood draws and the tubes and the wires like a champ. My mom drove back down Monday night (she is an awesome mom) so we had he help. Once all the tests came in we found out that B had Rotavirus and all of the doctors told us that the seizure was a result of the virus and his body being tired and dehydrated so we are not supposed to worry about his neurological condition (yeah right).

He was released from the hospital on Thursday and we spent the weekend resting. He is doing great now. Went back to daycare on Monday and back to soccer on Wednesday, I am ready to have a nice quite normal life for a little while.

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