Early in week, following the February 9th expansion, Tegan came down with a little sinus congestion. No biggy, right. Well, Thursday morning he woke up very cranky and you could tell he wasn't feeling well. He didn't want to eat or really even drink and was drooling up a storm. My conclusion was that he had come down with the sore throat his sisters had from the sinus drainage. I gave him some pain reliever. He was not running a fever. I put him down for an early nap time as he was really not a happy campers and appeared to be very tired. Upon waking from his nap, about 3 hours later, I noticed he was a little warm, took his temp. He had a low grade fever.
Since he was running a fever, we didn't do his expansion injections but we did do Corban's. His fever kept going up as the evening went on. At about 7:15pm his temp was up to 102.5 so we decided I should take him to the walk-in clinic to be sure it wasn't something more than just a sore throat, perhaps he had an ear infection. We arrived at the clinic registered and sat down. In their bright lighting, I noticed his neck expander. It looked a bit pink and was warm to the touch. That is when I put it all together. We had been told by Dr. B when Angel had tissues expanders that a common cold could cause a reaction in an expander. I immediately got on the phone and called Dr. B, on his cell phone.
Thankfully, he answered and told us what he'd like the clinic to do. We were called back while I was still conversing with Dr. B. I told the doctor what the specialist recommended and that is what they did. He received a shot of antibiotics and an oral prescription, which we took a dose of as soon as we got home. I loaded him up on pain reliever and put him to bed.
Friday morning, he woke up like he had the following morning. I gave him the antibiotic and a dose of pain reliever and he seemed to feel a little better. Though just as the day before, he didn't want to do anything but sit on the couch and still didn't really want to eat. I kept up on the pain reliever because he was very uncomfortable. Complained that his head and expander area hurt. As the day wore on, he did not seem to improve, in fact by the evening he seemed to be feeling worse and the pinkness looked red and was hot to the touch and every move you made with him seemed to hurt him.
I thought, it's only been 24 hours, we'll give the antibiotics time to work till the morning and then decide if we should take the next step. Well, around 9pm my 12 & 10 year old mentioned that they thought the tissue was quite red, not something I would really expect them to realize - I knew then it was time to make an ER visit. I quickly got into some comfy clothes and whisked Tegan off to the Children's hospital's ER.
They put an IV line in, took some blood to check his white count and hooked him up to fluids. Within an hour of the hydration, he began to perk up. He was somewhat dehydrated from not eating or drinking much the prior 48 hours. That was my first realization that we had made the right choice to bring him. Another hour later they said his white count and inflammation counts were high, they were admitting him for IV antibiotics. Diagnosis - Cellulitis.
While in the ER
I didn't ask questions at the time, figured ok, they'll give him some IV antibiotics and we'll be able to go home Saturday afternoon. Boy was I wrong.
Cellulitis (sel-u-LI-tis) is a common, potentially serious bacterial skin infection. Cellulitis appears as a swollen, red area of skin that feels hot and tender, and it may spread rapidly
About 1am we were finally taken to our room and by 2am we were finally able to lay down and sleep. Due to his complete exhaustion, he slept the entire night without saying a word, till almost 9am. Wish I could have slept that well.
To be continued....
No comments:
Post a Comment