And Still He Sleeps.......

And so it begins. I am in very familiar territory again. Dreaded territory...but at least we are home.

David started trending downward as the morning progressed yesterday. His cough worsened, at least for an hour or so and his temp went down and then up in spikes. He went from rosy cheeked to pale and dark sunken eyed. I knew it was not in his best interest for us to take a wait and see attitude, so I dialed up my new best friends.....the Mulvane EMS. After a little bit of struggling, they were able to extract him from his bed and get him in the ambulance. Damn my 50+ year old house with the narrow hallways and his spika cast.

Once at the hospital I could literally feel the knot starting in my stomach. His temp was down but his heart rate was high and his blood pressure started dipping. The only bright spot was that my favorite ER doctor was present and accounted for. She knows David almost as well as his pediatrician does. She also knew that the little boy she was looking at (pale, quiet and lethargic) was not the David who usually graces her ER. He immediately drifted off to sleep, only to wake up to receive his IV. I just stood by and do what I do best in these situations. I watched the monitors. I watched his O2 stats look beautiful which I found strange with his cough and I watched his heart rate stay a bit elevated while his blood pressure was around 85/40 and trending down. The knot was tightening.

After x-rays and a full blood work up (some of it which can't be read for at least 24 hours) they concluded....though not definitively......that they thought he might have a touch of lower lobe pneumonia. At any rate they felt what was going on was likely viral and every nurse, doctor and aide donned a precautionary mask when coming within 30 feet of him. They started him on the dynamic duo of anti-biotics and sent him to the floor.

Once on the floor....he was pretty animated and almost his old self for about 30 minutes, then the temp crept up to almost 102. The lethargy kicked in again and the only signs of the child I knew were the fact that he downed about 6 drinks and managed to snarf a hamburger and fries. He then quietly watched tv and drifted back off to sleep, where he has stayed other than being roused for vitals checks. Here we sit at almost 9 a.m. and he is still out. Never in his life has he slept this late. He is pale and running a low grade fever. So the question remains....why have the anti-biotics not kicked in yet? 

Perhaps some illumination on the subject> With kids like David, when fevers spike and lethargy kicks in....there can be a million and one reasons. Coming off the tail of a fresh surgery, it can be from the trauma of the surgery, from infection setting in from the surgery or from a bug he caught in the hospital while having surgery. However...it can also be from other things.....like his shunt. 

David is what they call hydrocephalic. It means that the fluid doesn't drain from the ventricles in his head/brain area like everyone elses does so he has to have a shunt (drain device) to drain it for him. If not drained it can cause swelling on the brain, brain damage and death. A shunt is connected to where the brain normally drains and then has tubing which travels into his stomach where the brain fluid is released and absorbed. Because the shunt is basically a foreign devise in the body, many kids who have shunts, develop a lot of shunt infections and they have to go in and remove the shunt, hit them with major anti-biotics and then replace the shunt. Thankfully David has never been there, but he has had what they call a shunt malfunction where after about 8 years, his shunt just clogged to the point of nothing could flow through it. He spiked a fever and became lethargic and very pale. After a quick replacement surgery (about an hour) he was like a new kid. We have had no problems since, but a doctor this morning suggested that pneumonia might not be Davids only issue at this point.

They have a call into David's neuro-surgeon (Dr. G) and they are planning on a shuntagram in the next little while. If this is shunt related....that means David will be undergoing another surgery....likely today. The knot in my stomach cannot possibly get any tighter. At this point I don't know whether to hope that the shunt is the issue so that we can definitely move forward or to hope that it is just pneumonia because he doesn't seem to be any better today.

I managed to sleep just enough last night to be able to think coherently enough to be really freaked out by all of this today. I am still so tired though that I am finding myself jumping to some really scary places where David is concerned and it is taking everything I have to fight this feeling of unraveling.  I am to the point where I am starting to HATE David having these surgeries as they end up being so hard on him. And still he sleeps......

Reigning myself in....I am going to trust in God and have faith that He will put the answers and the skill to make David better in the hands of this staff. Please keep praying for David and as always....thank you for reading!