On Monday, I called her doctor and by the time they got back with me the office was closed, so we were directed to Children's Mercy South Urgent care. After a two plus hour wait we were called back so that the nurses could get some vitals. This particular nurse was quite put off that Kylie was crying - I would be too if you woke me up, stripped me down and took my temperature in a rather invasive manner. Anyhow, this nurse asked a doctor if she could give Kylie some Tylenol because "I've got a baby down here that won't stop crying". Whatevs. A few minutes later we saw the doctor. Seemed like a nice enough guy, but was lacking any conviction on why he wanted to run tests on her blood (a vein stick, not a heel stick) and urine (required a cath). So, after he left, Jody and I used our parental veto and walked out.
Fast forward to Wednesday. I was referred to Johnson County Pediatrics by a co-worker. We couldn't get in to see the doctor I was looking for - Bryan Nelson - but we got in to see his wife, who is a nurse practitioner. Well, they are awesome. They had the "fire". They pretty much asked to do the same things that were suggested Monday at CMSouth, but they had conviction in their reasoning. That's all we could ask for.
They were pretty concerned about her color and that she was pretty lethargic. So, they did a heel stick to check her white blood cell count - this is to see if she's fighting an infection, high white blood cell count means infection. They took urine via a cath to check on a few other things. We also did nasal swabs for RSV and flu. The nasal stuff came back negative, the urine didn't provide a positive or negative, but the blood came back with a very high white blood cell count (i.e. infection). Another doctor, Dr. Winburn, came by to provide a consult and suggested she might have to go to "Mercy". Wow!
By ambulance! Double wow!
And they would probably do a spinal tap! Triple wow!
I'm sure everyone would be, but Jody and I were in complete shock. Dr. Winburn and Nurse Nelson didn't seem terribly concerned, but obviously concerned enough to ship us all off to the downtown location of Mercy via ambulance. Everyone at JoCo Peds was so apologetic that we had to meet them in such a rough way.
Here are a couple pictures that I snapped with my phone as we were leaving the doctor's office...
I followed and Jody rode in the front seat of the ambulance. Apparently she wasn't allowed in the back. So, the entire way there Jody got to listen to a screaming Kylie while she couldn't do anything about it. We pulled up to the hospital just after six in the evening on Wednesday, 2/4.We were immediately admitted and given a room. Within an hour or two they did a spinal tap and took some more blood. Luckily, we weren't allowed in the room to hear / see the tap. At some point, either in the ambulance or when they did the tap, they gave her an IV connection so they could give her fluids and a broad spectrum antibiotic that way. Fun fun. They also cultured the urine to see if something was growing in there.
We got word from our med student on Thursday morning that her spinal fluid was clear, which means the infection wasn't present there. That was very good news! I'm not sure when we go the word, but the official diagnosis is a urinary tract infection. From the sounds of things, it was caused by the diarrhea she's been experiencing for about a month now. The cool thing is that when they did the culture, they also ran it against a bunch of antibiotics to see what would eradicate this little pest in the most efficient manner.
Just before that med student came in, Jody saw a sheet of paper with a diagnosis that said Kylie was potentially septic. If that was the case, that means an infection has spread to the blood stream. Very bad. Luckily though, her blood was also free of the infection.
As the hours, and days, ticked by it was very apparent that whatever the good folks at Children's Mercy were giving her was working. Her color started getting better and she gradually got close to being her same old self. She never stopped fussing though!
All three of us are runing pretty ragged. Sleeping is tough enough with a baby, but in a hospital, you mind as well forget about it. She slept from about 1:00am to 5:00am, although very fitfully, on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Then, Thursday night she finally fell asleep on me around 11:00pm and woke up screaming at about 12:30am. Luckily, our nurse was nice enough to disconect the IV so that I could take her for a walk through the halls. My apologies to the other patients in 5 Sutherland! After trying everything, we finally got her back to sleep about 2:00am and she got up about 6:30am when a nurse came in to give her some more antibiotics.
I'm writing this at about 10:00am on Friday and it sounds like we've got everything figured out. The team just made their rounds and decided on a good antibiotic.
Sounds like we're going home today!
Here are a couple more pictures I snapped over the past couple of days...
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