Oh, Sick

This was the scene yesterday...

Nathan was just getting over it (but it still quite tired) and Aiden had just been hit with it. And I say "it" because we don't know what "it" is....just some random gastrointestinal thing.

Nathan began having high fever about a week ago and by Wednesday, stuff was coming out both ends. Although he only threw up once, the other end stayed quite active. I spoke to the advice nurse from our pediatrician's office on Wednesday just to make sure it wasn't anything to be concerned about. Every time I looked up his symptoms online, it kept telling me he had appendicitis! Well, I wasn't going to run off to the ER just because a certain medical website told me that's what he had. The nurse said that's certainly not where she went with the symptoms I was describing and that they were seeing more GI bugs that they could count right now, so that's probably just what it was. But since the fever was lingering for nearly a week, they wanted to see him if it was still there on Friday.

So by Friday, his fever was finally gone, but later that night, he woke up screaming with tummy pain and lots of diarrhea. He had woken up just as I was going to bed and I was up with him until 5am. He finally had one last big diaper and passed out. I got to bed for about 2 1/2 hours before Aiden woke up at 7:30 vomiting everywhere. He threw up about once an hour all day, unless he tried to drink anything or take any Tylenol, then he'd throw up immediately. I couldn't get his fever below 103 and after 12 hours of that, he was shaking and lethargic. I finally called the weekend answering service for our pediatrician. How long was I supposed to let him suffer before an ER trip was needed?

Just before they called back, Aiden woke up slightly from his fever-induced sleep and asked for peas. I tried to suggest every bland food I had in the house, but he wanted peas. As he laid motionless on the couch, we fed him peas one by one until he said he was done. John took over when the call came back. After a 15 long conversation on all the details of Aiden's symptoms, we were told that if he could keep the peas down, he was probably on the way to being done with the vomiting. But if he threw up just one more time, we had to head to the ER immediately.

Aiden said he was tired, so we put him to bed and I prayed my head off that we could make it through the night. Once the boys were in bed, the 2 1/2 hours of sleep I'd gotten the night before finally took over and I had trouble keeping my eyes open. I think I'd been in mom-mode all day and hadn't been feeling a darn thing. I was so focused on keeping my child out of the hospital.

We all ended up sleeping straight through the night and boy did we need it! Aiden hasn't thrown up since just before I spoke to the on-call doctor, although he still has a slight fever. He is eating and drinking and able to keep it all down.

Out Saturday certainly didn't turn out like we planned - John and I had tickets to Aiden's preschool auction party and dinner (1920s theme), but that obviously was out of the question once Aiden started throwing up. But I understand that once you've got kids, these things happen. I'm just happy that it was just one day of the really bad stuff. I do not like feeling helpless and out of control when my child is so sick!