Poor Lucas!

What started out as a high fever ended up being something much worse for little Lucas. On Saturday he seemed a little fussy but we figured it was teething, a little ibuprofen and playing in the pool seemed to help his demeanor. When we woke up on Sunday he had a little fever but was eating and drinking pretty normally. By Sunday afternoon, he started breathing a little funny and was starting to become a little lethargic, but what really concerned me was that he had this uncontrollable tremble from time to time. By the time we were starting to get ready for bed, something just didn't feel right. While I tried to comfort him Jeff called the advice nurse to make sure we could see someone in our doctor's office the next day. Well, after hearing about all his symptoms and having us evaluate his breathing...we were headed to the ER at 10:30 at night.

On the way there, I kept thinking "I bet those ER doctor's are going to think I am fool for bringing in a kid who just has a little bug". The ER doctor looked at Lucas and immediately recommended that we get a blood draw and an IV in ASAP. His white blood cell counts were through the roof, he was severely hydrated, and his heart was racing a million miles a minute. It took me a minute to realize we weren't going home. After a torturous first blood poke with a nurse who resembled Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer...basically the jist of it was she was getting off at 1AM, she didn't want to draw his blood, and then decided against the doctor's orders to put in an IV. (Funny, all the things patients can here from a central desk) So, I say there's a little place in Hell reserved for her for poking my baby twice unnecessarily just because she didn't want to do her job. She also looked at me like I was a freak because Lucas didn't have a pacifier, she didn't believe me and still tried giving him one. That just pissed him off even more. I think it's pretty patheic to have the ER doctor apologize on your behalf when you didn't follow orders to put an IV in...

After all the that, we got a new nurse who finally got his IV going pretty soon the whimpering and hoarse crying stopped and he was lounging in my arms watching "I eat 33, 000 calories a day" special on TLC. Around 3AM after he had some fluids and even had a bite of a cheese omelet the doctor decided he needed to get admitted for observation. Since our insurance has a contract with the local children's hospital, we had to be transferred. We got to the hospital just before rush hour started in Portland. Poor guy was so sick that by noon they had already confirmed that we would be staying the night. He was just not getting better. Honestly, it wasn't 10 PM Monday night that we started seeing signs of our little boy coming back around. I also think seeing his brother running around encouraged him to get better quickly. By the next morning all his vitals had stabilized and he was itching to run around with Max. The room we had was HUGE. So we just had Max stay with us the second night. He did great.

We are so thankful for the team of doctor's and nurse's (well everyone, but Rudolph) who took care of our little boy at St. Vincent's and Dornbecker's. We really felt like all the nurses and doctors really cared about getting Lucas better. I know there are people who are disgruntled about health care in America, but all we saw were extraordinarily caring people who were there doing their job the best they could.

Also thanks to Tamara who made food and iphone chargers magically appear, and also gave us a chance to rest. And it goes without saying that Max was in the good hands of his Auntie and Uncle who loved up on him and even let him take over their small bed.