Hannah's Hospital Experience - very long record...don't expect you to read it...more for my sake to remember it all...there are some pics though

Monday was a normal day for us. The kids were fine. They played and had a good day. In the below picture they are playing a new game they got for their birthday, they are catching "butterflies" They are in their pajamas but Hannah has to stay in hers most days because she scratches her legs and feet if she does not. So all this to say no one was showing any hints of being sick.

Tuesday morning the kids got up and I got them their breakfast and I was so tired I laid back down while they watched their cartoon and ate. Hannah came to me shortly and said, "Mama, I need to hold you" So I picked her up to hold her and noticed she was very hot. She had a fever of 102 at this point. I gave her tylenol and held her the rest of the morning. Her fever broke at one point on Tuesday but went up to 103 late in the afternoon. By evening I couldn't keep her fever down at all. So I started alternating Tylenol and Motrin. Still the fever persisted. I was not concerned, she has run fever before and they usually say do not call the doctor until she has had fever for 3 days. Later Tuesday night I picked her up and she said "ow, mama, you hurt me" I told her I was sorry and was thinking wow, I barely touched her she must just be sensitive from the fever. Later on I needed to take her temperature and she said "take it under this arm", and she pointed to her right arm, I said okay and did. Then she was laying down and needed to go potty, I told her to get up and go and she said "I can't" and I said why and she said "my arm hurts". So I took her potty and looked at her arm and noticed her lymph node was swollen and large. Daniel and I decided we would just call the dr. the first thing in the morning.
(Below picture is from Tuesday, all she did was sleep and all I did was hold her. I had put her down to get Benjamin some lunch and Josie kept her company for me, had to get a picture)
Wednesday morning Daniel and I headed to the doctor. Her regular doctor does not work on Wednesdays so I just got her in to see the available doctor. At this point she was in a lot of pain. She would not let me touch her or take her pjs off to get her dressed so we took her to the doctor in her pjs. When the doctor came in and looked at her she said, "this is the sickest baby I have seen all week" Then she looked at the lymph node and did not know what to do. So we did a white count and it showed that the white cells were elevated, meaning there was infection somewhere. So they came back and did another blood test. Then they gave her a shot of some heavy duty antibiotic. We found our her regular doctor was there that day (a mircle from God, she hasn't worked on a Wednesday in years), so her doctor came in and examined her two. We listened to the doctors talk back and forth to decide what they wanted to do. They decided to send us home. They said with the antibiotic shot she should show significant improvement within 7 hours. They told us to return at 9:00Am the next morning for another check and most likely another shot. So we went home, Daniel went back to work, my Mom came over after work so Daniel could go to church and I wouldn't be home alone. My Mom was changing her diaper and asked me to come over. The lymph was swollen more than it was and the swelling was spreading down into her chest and the fever was not going down as the doctors said it would. The doctors said if we didn't see improvement then it was probably MRSA (off the top of my head I can't tell you what the stands for but it is a drug resistant staph infection which usually has to be treated with IV medications). So we called the on-call nurse and she sent us straight to Vanderbilt.

When we got there we had a little wait in the waiting room before seeing the triage nurse. Once we saw the triage nurse we were sent quickly to a room in the ER and a doctor came very quickly (others were being sent back to the waiting room for a longer wait). The doctors thought she might need surgery and so they sent her for an ultrasound to see if there was fluid in the lump that might need to be drained. It turned out that there were 3 swollen lymphs, one with a little bit of infection starting to appear in it. The others were not filled with fluid, so they called off surgery (thank goodness). Instead they admitted her to the hospital and started IV fluids. There were no rooms available in the hospital floors so we remained in the ER but had doctors from upstairs coming down to check her. That night there were so many people in the ER that they had the halls lined with beds, we were lucky to get a room where we could close the door and she was able to watch movies.
(Grani snapped this picture with her cell phone and despite the fever and being in the ER Hannah flashed a big smile)

On Thursday morning Hannah's doctor told us we might get to go home that night if the fever went away. They moved us to a room upstairs around noon and before they moved her the fever was gone. When we got upstairs it spiked back up to 103 so we prepared ourselves for another night at the hospital. The doctor came in that night and said we could go home if we wanted. I really didn't feel comfortable going home and the more the doctor looked and her she started thinking the same. So the doctor and I decided we should stay overnight and go home in the morning. Boy are we glad we did....

About 10:00 Hannah broke out in hives all over her face. Then not long later she started wheezing. The nurse, Daniel and I were pacing waiting for the doctor. We got Benadryl in her and a breathing treatment, as well as a chest x-ray. Things began to calm in her immediately, but we kept a close eye on her the rest of the night and what a long night it was. They gave her an oral steroid. Those things make you go crazy. She screamed at Daniel and I for over an hour. Screamed and screamed and hit and kicked and finally fell asleep. She woke up about 10 minutes later and started it up again, this time Daniel was not there because he had to leave the hospital to go get "safe" benadryl for her, the hospital only had liquid and we had run out of the stuff we brought from home. Finally at 5:00AM she fell asleep and slept until noon or later. Of course by the time the nurses and doctors were needing to come in and check on her. It was decided by the hospital doctor and her doctor to leave her on the antibiotic she was on and even though she had the allergic reaction the night before decided they could keep her on it and just treat the allergy as it occured. When the doctor came to check her the hives were completely gone, but they had come and gone all night long, oh and they did spread to her legs and arms. For awhile we were trying to decide what caused it and finally just ended up on it was the antibiotic. They also decided that they trusted us to know what to do if the allergic reaction happened again and decided to send us home. They did give us a prescription for an epipen. Just the fact that we had to take an epi pen home scared me!
We got home and we were fine. We started watching tv and holding Hannah and then I looked at her and her face was all swollen and red. I started to panic. Why did they send us home, she is so sick. I called my Mom in a panic and said she had to come right away that I couldn't do this. So she came and we watched and the swelling and hives came and went all night long. I finally was able to get some sleep though.

The next day was fine until the evening and then the hives got worse and worse and spread over more of her body. She was also starting to need breathing treatments and they were getting closer together. To top it off she started saying she was hurting again and her lump was bigger and firmer. So once again we set into high gear. We called the on-call nurse and started preparing ourselves to be sent back to the hospital. However, the nurse said to just make sure she wasn't running fever and keep an eye on her, we didn't have to go back. We checked her temp and it was higher than it had been but no fever. So we stayed home. We got lots of people to pray for us and withing a few hours the hives were completely gone! Her breathing improved, and her lump softened again and stopped hurting! God answered our prayers.

Her hives stayed gone most of Sunday and she was in a terrific mood. We played games with her and she was so pleasant all day. The hives began to come back in the afternoon and we did have to give her another breathing treatment, but it still was not as bad as Saturday night. We have decided she will probably get worse in the evenings and be better during the days.

(Not sure how well you can see the hives on her face, you can see them on her legs, that is what her arms, face, and some of her bottom, back, and chest looked like on Saturday night and off and on at other times)


So now we wait, we treat the allergic reaction, and we hope the infection is killed off and the lump goes down soon. She is on this antibiotic for 10 days so we will most likely experience these side effects for the next several days. We did add in another antihistimine and now that the steroid is in her system it seems to be keeping the hives down. We appreciate the many prayers of family and friends as our sweet baby girl tries to recover from this awful sickness!


(The below pics are from Sunday, she had such a good time playing games with Daddy today. When Benjamin got home he went straight for the balloons and he laughed and laughed, then Hannah joined in. They got a bit too wild and we had to stop them to protect Hannah and her breathing)