"No more Pokes"

Well here is the rest of our adventure (for lack of a better word) at the hospital.

4-14-10 (wednesday)

The rest of Wednesday we spent just watching as nurses came and took her vitals. Her last fever of 102 was around 9pm that night...after that it started slowly going down. A good sign that the injected antibiotics were working.  She hated it when the nurses would come in and check her vitals. She is totally traumatized.  But who can blame the girl. Getting an IV stuck in your hand, having to wear a mask if she left the room, having all those blood and urine and finger pricks and monitors everywhere. It was rough.  She would even start crying and saying "No No No" when the food people would come in with her food. We had to keep reminding her that not everyone was here to poke her, No Ouchies they would all say.  Sad!

I was able to run home while they were doing the chest xray to get things squared away with our other 2 kiddos and to pack a bag for Kambryn and I to stay the night at the hospital.  Kyle and I are lucky to have such amazing friends and neighbors that helped with Talan and Jantsen. Jantsen ended up wanting to sleep at my friend Lisa's house.  She has 2 kids, Kaydee...which is one of Kambryn's besties, and then her little guy Parker, who is 2. And Jantsen absolutely LOVES to play with Parker. And Parker loves Jants too, so it worked out.  Thank You So much Lisa. So one child was taken care of for the night.  Talan spent most of the day being passed around, everyone wanted to help watch our little man.  Thank you Tiffeni and Jenny for watching him. And also my wonderful friend Allie even ended up bringing Talan (and delicious dinner) up to Kambryn's room so that I could feed Talan. She even sat up with us in her room and talked and just tried to do anything that she could to help.  It was nice to have someone there for support for all of us. Thanks Allie!!

(sorry it is blurry. But this picture shows exactly how "happy" she was to be at the hospital)

So anyways, back to the story. After getting packed up and heading back to the hospital, I was talking to Kyle on the phone and he said he just met the doctors to kindof go over Kam's story and talk about kindof what might be going on. Well at least we hoped they would be able to tell us something, but instead all we got was "Looks like we kindof have a mystery on our hands right now." We even had one doctor tell us at one time "She has an infections somewhere, we just don't know where it is."

One of the worst things that Kyle had to go through was being with Kambryn while she was getting her IV.  He hates thinking about needles and his daughter, but having to be there when they have to put her IV in was just awful.  He had to carry her down to a seperate room so she wouldn't associate her own room with getting poked. Right as he walked into the other room, Kambryn knew something bad was going to happen and she started to tense up. There were like 5 nurses standing around this bed, as well as a few other people that were incharge of trying to distract her with books, movies, dora pictures, whatever that they thought would work.  So you put her on the table and held her hand and told her it was going to be okay.  But once they started all their work, Kyle had to go to the corner of the room, and Kambryn was crying.  They tried to distract her but nothing was working.  Kambryn started crying "Daddy, Daddy" of course they Kyle ran over there, held her hand, and had her turn away from where the nurses were working and look at him the whole time.  They were finally able to set the IV.  Kyle then picked her up and took her back to her room.  It was a pretty sad thing for Kyle to go through, hearing her yell Daddy...and seeing her cry and be in pain.  I am glad that Kyle was there and not me because I am sure that I would have been bawling right along with her and wouldn't have been able to show any type of strength.

After all the tests, after a chest and abdominal xray, and everything, they really don't know what is going on.  So they just want to keep monitoring her over night to see if she gets better. Right before Kyle was getting ready to leave for the night, Kambryn woke up from a little nap and starts hallucinating again. Her eyes were really dilated and she was kindof freaking out, grabbing at Kyle and looking around. Totally confused. And at this time her temperature was around normal too. Luckily one of the resident doctors were in our room at the time and was able to witness the whole thing. It took about 10 minutes to get her to calm back down and back into bed and relaxed.  Scary again! Well for the rest of the night nothing else really happened.  Kyle went home to sleep and take care of Talan. Kambryn's temp started going down which was great and she hadn't thrown up since that morning. Great! Kambryn and I didn't get awhole lot of sleep that night. She was scared and uncomfortable...but who could blame the girl. A broken right collarbone, and IV coming out of her left hand, and she is in a new and different place.  So the finger prick at 6am was not very welcomed at all!!  Why do they have to do it so early anyways...geez!

4-15-10 (thursday)
Between 6:00-8:30am alot of doctors and nurses and food people and everyone in the whole hospital it seemed were coming in and out asking lots of questions, lots of the same questions, getting her vitals, bringing food, just lots of things, but really not bringing any answers. We still haven't been able to leave the room, and we haven't been told really anything yet, not even about the results from the chest and abdominal xrays.  Did they see anything?  Is it a kidney infection? Is there anything even there? Why are they taking awhole day to tell us anything?  Lots of questions start popping up.  So anyways, at about 9:00 my pediatrician, Dr. Harrison, comes in and says that the antibiotics are working since her temperature is back down and stayed down through the night. She hasn't thrown up, which is good. The IV was helping get nutrients back into her.  Her white blood cell count is down, but still not down to where it should be. And he was still concerned about her PRC (i think)...her shows her inflammation blood count. He said that was still pretty high. 

So then he starts saying, she has a hazy cluster in her right upper lobe of her lung. Typically when they see a cluster, it is pneumonia, but in the upper part of her lung, it is kindof unusual to see it there.  And he is confused as to if it is pneumonia, then how did she get it. She hasn't been sick, coughing or anything.  She hasn't aspirated or choked on anything that would cause an infection to get in there. He asked me to think real hard if something has happened....no nothing! Nothing that would cause pneumonia has happened.  He says he wants to keep her one more day to keep monitoring her. I also asked him about the whole hallucinations and eye dilation and if we I need to be worried about a head injury from her fall. He said he was alittle concerned about that too and that is another reason they want to keep her one more night.

Kyle gets to the hospital about 30 minutes after talking to the Dr. and I told him about the morning and having to stay another day and night for evaluation. Kyle was convinced that the reason they are keeping us another night is because they aren't entirely sure what she has, they don't want to say that to us, so they are calling in pneumonia...even though 8 doctors have told us "her lungs sound great", "it isn't pneumonia", and now they say it is pneumonia but they want to monitor her one more night....Another way to say "we don't know exactly what it is so lets keep her one more day. If it was pneumonia we would see a better drop in her blood levels and we wouldn't have to keep you one more day." But that wasn't the case!
It was comforting to know that we were at a Children's Hospital, working with some of the best doctors around. So all we could do was trust them.

(eating ice cream with daddy Day 2)

Since I didn't get a great night sleep, I take Talan home with me to take a nap, get more clothes for tonight and get some things done around the house. Kyle spent most of the day with Kambryn. Watching movies, trying to keep her comfortable, playing Hungry Hungry Hippos, and other things to keep her entertained in her room.    When she wanted to take a nap, she HAD to sleep on Kyle.  Poor girl was so uncomfortable and scared,  Her daddy is always such a comfort for her!!  After Jantsen got home from school, Talan, Jantsen and I headed back up to the hospital for some family time with Kambryn. 

When we first got there, Kambryn was not feeling that great and was really unhappy.  It scared Jantsen and he didn't like seeing his sister like that. I asked one of the nurses if I could take her on a walk in one of the wagons they had on our floor, but the nurse said that since they don't know what exactly she has, that she has to stay in isolation, but I was more than welcome to take some toys from the playroom into her room.  I thought to myself, "great how is my daughter suppose to play with something. She has a sling on from her broken collarbone on one side, and a huge IV needle in the other hand.  Let me play with the toys for you Kambryn and you watch okay...right!!"

(it was a rough day for Kambryn being cooped up in her room all day with Kyle and nothing much to do)

Kambryn was really sticky and sweaty when she woke up. She hadn't had a bath since Tuesday night, and with a high fever, crying and sweating a lot in the past few days, she needed a bath.  She was really not happy with getting in the bath at first, but it sure made a difference in her mood afterwards. She was much happier, and the evening turned out to be pretty fun for our little family.  (I don't know if I should use the work fun at describing hanging out in the hospital.) But we did have dinner as a family and watched a movie and played some games. I think it was good for our family to hang out together.

Jantsen spent the night again at the Stanley's, Kyle and Talan had another good night of sleeping at the house.   I do remember as we were both falling asleep, Kambryn kept asking me to play with her hair. So as I was laying in this little twin sized hospital bed with my 3 year old, still not knowing what exactly is going on in her body, I was thankful for the improvement that we were seeing in just 24 hours. I stroked her hair hoping that I could give her any sense of comfort.  We both slept in her bed and I was thankful for the peaceful night of sleep for the both of us.

(This was taken right before Kyle left for the night. Kambryn's little friend Kaydee drew a get well card for her. It made Kambryn really happy. So sweet!!)

(I took this picture in the morning before the nurses had to come in and prick her finger)

4-16-10 (friday)

So Friday Kyle got to the hospital around 8:30 and we waited for Dr. Harrison to come talk to us.  He finally got to our room around 9:15.  He said that he blood levels looked good and we were going to go home that day.  He said that she did have upper lobe pneumonia and that she needed to stay on an antibiotic for the next 10 days and have a follow up chest xray to make sure it was improving.  We were really excited to get that news.

Although they told us that she had pneumonia, Kyle and I still aren't entirely confident that is what it was.  The chest xray showed a cluster of something, however we were never able to figure out how she got it, and it didn't make sense that for 24 hours everyone (about 8 different doctors) told us that her lungs sound great and that it WASN'T pneumonia.  But now that they need to call it something, lets just give it the name pneumonia. But all that mattered to us was that she was getting better and we were able to go home!

(although she doesn't look happy in this picture...she really was pretty excited. Kyle said it was like she was getting out of jail. Freedom!)

We were all so happy to finally get out of the hospital.  Kambryn was so happy and talkative. It was the happiest she had been all week.  We are so thankful and feel so blessed for the amazing family and friends that we have. Thank you all for the help, the sweet texts and messages, the dinners, the prayers, and the support and love!! Kambryn is almost back to her normal stubborn sweet self.  We had a follow-up doctor visit on Friday and things looked good.  We also went for a chest xray yesterday so we will hear on Monday to see how it all looks.  My fragile immune system accident prone child really had quite the week! Breaking her collarbone to being in the hospital with fevers and throwing up, and apparently an uncommon pneumonia all within a week....We love our little Kambryn!!