Crazy Christmas

We thought we would tell yall Merry Christmas and let everybody know what has been happening with us.

So…

Merry Christmas!

And

We have been in the hospital and doctor’s offices a bit over the holiday. Cole has a history of intussusception ( www.kidshealth.org/parent/system/surgical/intussusception.html ) which basically causes a blockage in his intestines. He has had this fixed twice with enema and once with surgery—(surgery was about a year ago). On the night of December 23, Cole started grabbing his abdomen and screaming in pain about every 15 minutes. After watching him at home for a while and talking to the nurse on call, we took him into the hospital. We were there from about 9:15 pm to about 3:30 am (Christmas Eve) while they did a series of tests on him and gave him an IV. They didn’t find an intussusception with a barium enema so they told us to take him home and watch him and come back if he got a fever or started vomiting or the pain persisted. They also said that sometimes the intussusception can telescope in and out so he may have had it, but it corrected itself.

So we went home and he was pain free for almost 12 hours. The pain came back that night and he had a rough night, but didn’t want to go to the hospital if we didn’t need to and definitely didn’t want to spend Christmas in the hospital. However, Cole started vomiting and the pain seemed to because more intense. So, after talking to the after hours nurse once again we went back to the hospital at around 8:15 on Christmas morning. Again, we did the tests and they were negative so we don’t have a specific answer other than it could be intussusception or it may not be.

We were able to leave around 2:30. He has not had any pain since the second enema, so that has been a blessing. We are going to visit and upper GI doctor soon to get Cole further tested to see if we can find out why this keeps happening.

So we had a good December 27th free of hospitals and doctors. We got to have family time and played whirlyball.

On December 28th Cole woke up with a fever of 102 (which was of concern because of his recent past history). We didn’t want to sit in an emergency room when the doctor’s office was open, so we made an appointment and went to our family doctor. We went in at 10. We took a flu test, a blood test, a strep throat test and went to get a chest x-ray. By 1:30 we had found that the flu and throat test were negative, but the blood test showed a bacteria infection and the x-ray showed pneumonia.

Cole got a big time shot in each leg and was sent home with another antibiotic. He is doing better right now. Especially when he is on Motrin. His fever was 103.6 this morning, but the Motrin brought it down to 101.1 and Cole is running around like he feels much better. He also went to the bathroom this morning, which means, for now, he does not have any blockage.

It has been a crazy Christmas and a challenge to be calm and remember what Christmas is about! For now, we are home and getting better. The scary part is not knowing if it will stay that way for long, but we are thankful for this. We will keep you updated!