First Fever and Unplanned Hospital Visit

On Monday evening, which also happened to be Flag Day, as I was getting Andrew changed into his jammies, I noticed he felt warm. (Cue suspenseful music.) In the hospital, they always took his temp under the arm, so I did that first, and got 100.0°, and again on the other armpit and got the same reading.  To be certain it wasn't a thermometer error, I got out the ear thermometer and it registered 100.2 and 100.4. Because 100.4 is the "magic number" for fevers and calling the doctor, I instantly felt a dread creep over me. The two things the doctors had been emphatically warning us about avoiding: fevers and head impacts. 

I called Liz and Mark into my room and we each said a little prayer while my thoughts were still reeling,  and I knew I needed to keep my wits about me. I decided it would be best to get the little ones to bed and settled before I headed to the hospital. So I went upstairs to their room and sang them their bedtime songs while I texted Troy the newest development. 

He replied asking if I had called the doctor.  Um, nope. I'll get right on that.  Oops. So much for keeping my wits. 

I tucked the littles in bed and called the hospital and asked to have them page the on-call Hematology Oncologist. My phone quickly rang,  and I explained to the doctor about his fever and lack of any other symptoms.  She told me to take his temp again, one hour after I noticed the initial fever, without administering Tylenol or any medications.  If it was still higher than 100.4°, call back, and she’d notify the ER that we would be bringing him in. 

While I prepped my to-go bag in the 30 minute waiting time, Troy and the boys came home from their Flag Day duties.  Troy showered and threw a bag together and I rechecked the temperature: 100.7°.  Noooooo!

I reluctantly called the doctor back and she told me what to expect: check in to the ER, put in the IV to draw blood levels and begin a blood culture to look for infection, then begin IV antibiotics.  She told me that the general criterion to come home was to be fever free for 24 hours, and plan on a minimum stay of 48 hrs.  

Troy insisted on taking the overnight shift again.  This did make sense, since I had an 8:00am ultrasound the next morning that I now needed to figure our childcare for.  It was past 9:00 at this point, and most of the kids were in bed. Andrew was very excited to be loading up in Daddy’s truck.  As I hugged them goodbye, I was fighting to hold back tears, and Andrew was grinning ear to ear and waving and smiling and saying, “Bye-bye, Mom!” I thought to myself, “Oh, if you only knew what lies ahead.” He does not like having the IV attached to his wrist, or the hospital ID bracelet on his ankle. 

They arrived and checked in, and as the doctor on the phone explained, they did all those things.  He did register a fever when they arrived around 10:00pm.  Andrew was very sleepy and they made a Facetime call to me.  We said good night and I sent a video to Andrew telling him “I Love You.” And he sent me this sweet video back.

He fell asleep in Troy’s arms an hour later. After a few hours in the ER, they transferred him upstairs to the inpatient room. When they checked his vitals there, he didn’t have a fever. That’s good news. 

Andrew slept pretty well, all things considered. Troy didn’t.  

The next morning, a friend texted me super early in the morning, and it worked out that she was able to watch my little kids so the two biggest boys could still get to Cross Country practice at 7:00am, rather than be stuck home on babysitting duty. 

On my way to my ultrasound, I called to check in with Troy, who answered the phone in a whisper.  “Is Andrew still asleep?” I whispered back.  He answered in the affirmative and I told him I’d a call back after the ultrasound. 

Everything looked good with baby on the ultrasound, so about an hour later I texted to see if Andrew had woken up yet. He had just gotten up, and was ordering breakfast. I asked Troy to FaceTime me when they came to do rounds.  I arrived home just as Grandma was starting piano lessons with Liz and James.  

I went to my room and Zoomed onto my presidency meeting and enjoyed visiting with the other 3 amazing women.  I told them Andrew was in the hospital again, and they all offered to do whatever we needed. I told them we didn’t know much at this point. But that if the doctors and Troy called, I’d need to leave the meeting early.  It was such a welcome respite to be able to focus on something other than my own crazy life for those 45 minutes. It’s so wonderful to counsel together in behalf of the women we love.  

Just as we were finishing up, Troy send me a text saying that the doctors were gathered outside their room.  

I logged off one call and onto the other.  In the meantime, Grandma had finished the piano lessons, picked up Tim and Spencer from practice, and dropped them off to their piano lessons.  

Five doctors made up the team doing rounds this morning. They introduced themselves, and they explained that since Andrew was looking so good, and hadn’t had a fever since his admission, that they would watch the culture results, give another round of IV antibiotics and likely discharge him later that afternoon!  This was waaaay better news than we had anticipated. They reviewed his blood counts, which were all low, as we could have expected, but his platelets were not as low as the previous week- they were 15,000.  When the inpatient doctors left, and while Troy and I were still connected, Andrew’s usual doctor walked in! He said that there was not a lot of sense of coming in for a clinic visit the following day, and he recommended rescheduling for Friday. He talked to us about infections, about his specific blood counts and how much they had changed in the past 5 days.  He said to expect red blood and platelet infusions on Friday if the trend continued.  He also said to expect to have many unexplained fevers and check-ins to the ER over the next little while. He told us that only about 30% of the fevers they see in the ER in these kids can be attributed to something.  Most of them are a mystery. We finished with the doctor, and Troy and I decided it didn’t make sense for me to come up to the hospital when the big boys finished their piano lessons; as we had been planning.  So around dinner time, they appeared and Andrew was very happy to see the family.  

James wanted to surprise Dad by mopping the floors, so we enlisted everyone to help vacuum and pick up their assigned rooms to get the job done.  He spent many hours with that mop and the floors looked great! It was the perfect “welcome home” surprise.  

I am so grateful our first “return trip” to the hospital was so uneventful.