A Visit to the Emergency Room

We spent ALL Saturday night, or I should say Sunday morning at Texas Children's ER with Levi. (I cannot remember the last time I stayed up all night long without sleeping a wink.) We took him to the doctor on Saturday morning because he is still very congested and having horrible coughing fits. (The poor guy has little red dots all over his face from all the coughing.) He has never run a fever, so it's just been "wait it out" because there was nothing they could do.

Saturday night about 10:30, I took his temperature and it was 101.2, so we called the doctor and had to take him to the ER. Then we watched for hours as they poked and prodded our little guy trying to figure out the source of the infection. They took his blood and urine for tests, did chest and abdomen x-rays, and did a lumbar puncture to test his spinal fluid for meningitis. His white blood cell counts were high, so they knew there was an infection somewhere, but they were unable to find it. At one point the doctor was concerned that it was either bacterial pneumonia or meningitis. Both of those options are scary. They put in an IV and gave him antibiotics before we left. So far, his fever has stayed down. When a 7-week-old runs a fever, they get pretty concerned. There were several other kids at the ER getting chest x-rays; it seems everyone is sick these days.

We're hoping they've knocked out the infection, but we're still not out of woods because he has so much mucus still in his chest that could become infected. He's been sick for about 3 weeks now and over a week with the bronchiolitis, so he has no idea what it's like to feel good. I've relapsed with the upper respiratory stuff (with two sick kids and little sleep it's not a wonder), so we really need some healing in our house.