So it's July 24... wow, time really flew by! I think about 2 posts ago, I was talking about how Bria was sick, and how we had about a thousand things to do in May and June. Well, Bria had other plans for us. We got back from DisneyWorld, thinking that the next big thing for us was to move out of the rental home (we rented a home to get out of our house to push us to keep going with the house renovations... we figured if we stayed at the home, we would give up with this long long long long process. we took a short lease, and now are moved in with mark's parents until it's all done. should be 8 months more... it'll fly by, like these last 8 months). Anyways, as we try to pack up the house, Bria gets sick again. Same as before. This time, I go to the MD on Day 1 of the fever. She doesn't see any signs of infection, but since fever really high, and pending urine lab, she gave an antibiotic anyways. That was on a Friday, so I went to work. Saturday morning, I get home and Mark drops the urine sample we collected to the Quest, and while I was alone with the kids, Bria does her chilling (I might have a seizure thingy), so I freak out as usual and start cooling her off with water and pray Mark comes home fast. As soon as he gets home, I call the MD, and she says since this is the second episode of unexplained fever she was just going to admit us for observation and lab tests. Since it was Saturday, the only way to be admitted was to go through the ER. We get to the ER, and they do their thing. The resident takes a history, and before even looking at Bria (didn't look at her throat, didn't look at her ears, didn't even look at her), he tells me it's a virus. He tells the nurse to give her Motrin/Tylenol and just wait a little. Fever stayed at 102ish the whole time we were there. I told the resident the our MD wanted to admit us for observation and wanted lab tests down on her. He looks at me at says, "Admit into the hospital!?! And what kind of lab tests did she want?". Thinking to myself, "you idiot, first take a look at my child before saying it's viral, and aren't there basic labs... CBC, etc...?" My dad was coming back in town from Miami, and since it was clear the resident didn't want to help us, I frantically called him and my MD to let her know we were at the ER. Thank god Dad arrived at the airport just then, so I told him to go to the ER right away. Before he arrived, it looked like my MD ended up ording the lab tests, chest x-ray, cathether, etc. So those were done, my dad arrived, and we just waited and waited and waited. Then they said, yup it's viral and we were going home. Bria was getting an IV due to dehydration, so they had me sign the discharge papers, they removed her IV, and they said we could leave. Bria still felt warm (which her temp never went down), and I asked the nurse to take her temp before we left since we had a long car ride home, I wanted to know where it was at. What was going through my mind at this time... we were here to be admitted, and they were not, the tylenol/motrin was not controlling her temps, and I was surprised that they would send someone home with a 102-103 fever. When the nurse took the last temp, sure enough 104... ever since my dad got there, the resident became off our case (Thank YOU), and the MD in charge said they wanted to admit her for observation (DUH!). So after like 7-8 hours sitting in a tiny room in the ER, after telling them I was there to admit Bria, they finally said they were going to admit. OMG!!!
Bria gets admitted to the Pediatric wing... as the only patient in the wing! The neonatologist was the admitting MD. Now here comes the REALLY SUCKY PART... they have to put in another IV into Bria since the great ER discharged us and removed it. He couldn't do it, the nurse couldn't do it, so they call a nurse from the neonatal wing who was awesome and did it on the first shot! Bria was really dehydrated which made it really hard.
So we were there Saturday to Tuesday. Didn't expect to stay that long. Each day when they told me we had to stay another day, etc. I was suprised. Considering all I was hearing was it's viral, viral, viral... then why do we have to stay here? At least now everyone was believing me on her chills and really high late night fevers. I began to think nobody was believing me on her high fevers and the bluish skintones when she chilled. But now the nurses were my witnesses. We had such great nurses. She did end up having some unusal lab results, that at first was so high, that nobody believed the result and didn't tell us until they redid that lab. It came back as the same high value. On Sunday morning, we had one resident tells us she had no clue what was going on, kind of a mystery. On Monday morning, we had another resident assure us that this was definitely a virus.
Monday night we brought in the infectious disease pediatric specialist (who was my Pediatrician), and she ordered an MRI for Tuesday. We debated transfering her to Children's, but didn't want to start over with admission. We thought she would do better with the sedation for MRI there, than at St. Joe's, but Bria was an MRI pro. She stayed so still, the technician was so impressed. What was supposed to take 2 oral sedations and about 3 hours, Bria did in 1 oral sedation dose and in 45 minutes since she was super still. Mark and I watched her get loaded into the machine, arms tied down by her sides, and when they removed her, she somehow got her thumb in her mouth. MRI ruled out our worst case scenario, which now leading them to think maybe JRA... and that's a BIG maybe. I felt bad for the resident that assured us that it was viral. She looked really sad when Bria was going into the MRI, and I asked her if she was ok, and she said she really felt bad for us. She said that she didn't have those labs in question when she told us it was viral. I really liked her honesty.
Still don't know what's going on. The rheumatologist didn't think it's JRA, but she wanted to see us if it happened again. Wait and see approach.
We debated about going to Cancun, but all the MDs gave us the "why wouldn't you go?" We figured if it was JRA, then if she gets sick again, she was going to get sick. And we had 3 doctors traveling with us. So we went to Cancun, will post on this AMAZING trip later! Definitely the break we needed.
But before we could go to Cancun, we had to move out of our house. With Bria in the hospital, and all the follow up visits, plus a trip to Children's to see the Rheumatology speciailist, we were running out of time. But with the help of family, it was done! I have to say that Mark's mom is a packing machine, and as we all know, Mark's dad is a cleaning machine! Without their help, we would not have finished. Unfortunately, with all that work, we thought we the house was in great condition, but our Dr. Jung Moon, our landlord, thought differently and took a chunk out of our deposit (not including a receipt of what they took out for). When we asked them, all of the things they took off for would not add up to what they took . They even took off for a broken refrigerator we had asked them to fix before that. I really liked living in that house, but when something went wrong, they took FOREVER to fix it. We even had bees inSIDE our house (threatening our lives) and the Moon took weeks to fix. The exterminator found 8 beehives surrounding the house. Ok, needed to vent. The Moons were really nice people, but really shady about not giving us an itemized list of what they took off. Really unprofessional.
Anyways, we get back from Cancun, and Bria a week in a half later, Bria is sick again. Same thing, same labs, but this time a UTI. So we just finished treating her, and waiting for follow up labs to be taken.
From when this all started in May until now, Bria has thankfully gotten stronger, very playful, and very naughty. She's a daredevil. Unfortunately, she used to be very independent, only wanting to sleep by herself, but she is now really needy only wanting to sleep with us, and always having to be in contact with us. It's our fault, she got used to sleeping with us since Mark and I were too scared to leave her alone when she was in danger of seizing.
So that's our update for now.
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