A war on two fronts

For today's installment of Slaviks Outnumbered, we're going to have a little World War II history lesson. The main players will be General George Patton (Nate) and General Douglas MacArthur (me). I chose Nate to play General Patton because in this story, he's much more likely to slap somebody.

Over the past week, Will has really been having a tough time. He had a day's worth of vomit about a week ago. Because we thought it might be shunt-related, General Patton took him to the ER. They did a shunt tap and determined that Will's shunt was working fine. They sent Will home with anti-nausea medication and he seemed to do better for about a day or two. For the next couple of days, he started to become more irritable. He only wanted to be held and nothing we could do was right.

On New Years Eve, Will had a seizure. It wasn't like his typical seizure - it lasted a lot longer and seemed to affect him more. We were on the phone with the pediatric neurologist for a long time and going back and forth on whether to take him in to the ER. Ultimately we all decided that Will seemed fine (yet tired) and we would let him sleep and re-evaluate in the morning.

Well on New Years Day, Will was inconsolable. We tried everything we could - singing, eating, napping, playing, riding in the car. For a few minutes Will would be ok, but the next second, he was screaming. He seemed altered, which (along with the seizure) pointed us back in the direction of a shunt malfunction.

General Patton packed up the car and he and Will were back to the ER. After a couple of hours, the doctors were able to determine that it wasn't a shunt malfunction... Will was backed up. Like in the #2 kind of backed up. As far as the x-ray could see backed up. Ouch.

So it appears as though he had a stomach virus (which caused the vomiting), which lowered his seizure threshold (causing the seizure) and caused his innards to run amok (backing up his bowels). After a healthy dose of laxative jet fuel, General Patton opted to stay the night with Will in the hospital in the case that pain management was necessary.

So General MacArthur stayed home with Luke and Matt. Luke has had a cough since Wednesday, which isn't too unusual for him in the winter time (due to his lasting lung damage from being on oxygen for so long in the NICU). We have a nebulizer for him when he gets sick, which he gets twice per day during the winter and is usually ok. But yesterday afternoon, it definitely started to get worse.

Matt has been a little congested over the past day or so as well. Didn't seem like a big deal until he woke up in the middle of the night last night with a fever of 102. I gave him Tylenol and finally he fell off to sleep, but his breathing seemed labored. I watched over him for a few hours until Luke woke up hacking like he had a hairball.

Our pediatrician isn't open on Sunday. Most aren't. I hunted around for a Sunday urgent care facility that would see kids as young as 8 months. Let's just say that they are few and far between. But we finally did find one in Wake Forest with an appointment in 30 minutes, and we were off to see them.

They gave Luke 2 more nebulizer treatments when we arrived because his pulse-ox was low. Matt got one as well, because he had started to wheeze. After about an hour in the office, the boys were breathing better. They were both diagnosed as having "the crud" and we had a prescription for antibiotics. We are also on a strict nebulizer schedule for the next couple of days with both Matt and Luke. Let's hope things continue to stay quiet here on the western front (yes, I know that General MacArthur wasn't on the western front... heck, he wasn't on the eastern front either ... but "all quiet in the Pacific theater" just didn't have the same ring to it).

General Patton is still at the hospital with Will. He's going through diapers hourly. That's a good sign (unless you're the one who has to change them...). The pediatricians are trying to make sure that Will is truly on the up and up before they send him home, which means a lot of visits from a lot of different -ologists. We have good luck with some specialties, and want to slap some others. Hence the Patton reference.

The hope is that Will is healthy and regulated today and can be released. But if he has to stay in the hospital for another night just to be sure, we're ready for that too. It is a good thing that Nate and I both have a high tolerance for stress and that we're both highly capable parents! It is tough to try to deal with all these things separately, but we seem to be doing ok.

When we thought we were going to have the weekend as we planned it, we had grand plans of going hiking yesterday, doing tons of laundry, going grocery shopping, putting away Christmas stuff (I know, exciting stuff... I feel an Old School reference would be appropriate here). Since all has quieted down at home, I've been able to get through the laundry. The other stuff is going to have to wait... thankfully we aren't eating MREs just yet.