Layla's Hospital Stay

So, you may have noticed a long delay in me getting Layla's 21 month post up. I had it halfway finished the night of December 5th and planned to finish it the next day, but all our plans got turned upside down when we went to the hospital with Layla on Friday and didn't return home till Thursday. For the record, this is a very long and detailed recount of Layla's hospital stay. You've been forewarned.

Here's what happened.

Layla had been running a fever off and on since Wednesday. Wednesday morning she woke up with a fever and was acting miserable and super cuddly (very unlike her) but after her Tylenol kicked in she perked right up and acted like her normal self (in fact the adorable 21 month pictures I took of her were actually that afternoon). Thursday morning she woke up again with a fever but same story; as the day wore on the fever went away and she acted fine. I still decided to stay home with her and get her in bed early instead of going out with everyone for Collin's birthday, and when I put her to bed at 7:30 her fever was back up over 100, but I still wasn't too worried.

That night she started crying around 1:30 a.m. Friday morning so I got her out of bed and her temp was 103.8. I immediately gave her Tylenol and took off her pajama pants to try and cool her off. I had woken Kyle up to get her some juice and was sitting on the couch with her until her fever went down a little bit, and Kyle had just gone back to our room to lay back down when Layla suddenly started having a seizure. Of course I freaked out and screamed for Kyle and he came out and took her from me until her seizure ended. Afterward she was just staring off into space and not really moving much. It was so scary.

We debated whether we should take her to the ER right away, and I called all 5 of the guys on our team to see if they could come stay with Landon, but none of them answered, so we decided to wait. 

 

However, just to give some background information so you don't think we're horrible parents for not immediately taking her to the hospital, I have a medical history of having febrile seizures when I was a child, as does my younger brother. We were both on medication to control the seizures until the age of 5. So since her temperature had obviously spiked and we knew about my history, we felt pretty confident that her seizure was also due to her fever and not to a more serious condition. 

So Layla's fever started going down, and we kept her in our bed with us to sleep so we could keep an eye on her. At 5:30 Layla and I both woke up and I immediately gave her the next dose of Tylenol because I could feel that her fever was back. She started acting really groggy and trembling (you know how you kind of shiver when you have a fever/chills? That's what she was doing). So we decided that we needed to go ahead and take her in. We got a hold of one of the guys to come over and watch Landon so we started getting changed and ready to go. Kyle was holding her while I was changing my clothes when she started having a second seizure. Of course by the time Rick got here I was totally freaking out and Layla was clearly just feeling miserable. 

We drove to a hospital that another American had told us they had been to before and took Layla into the ER. They were checking her over when she had a third seizure, and after she stopped they ushered us out of the room so Kyle could check in to admit her and they could put in an IV to give her anti convulsion medicine and start giving her fluids to get her fever down. 

They transferred us up to the PICU to wait for the hospital pediatrician to get in at 9 to check her over. They took blood and urine samples to try to determine the cause of her fever. While we were in the PICU she had a fourth seizure until her fever finally started going down a little bit. 

When the pediatrician came she put a second IV into Layla's other hand because she said they like to have 2 lines as an option in case there's an emergency and one stops working. 

Layla was pretty much miserable at this point because she couldn't use either of her hands, still had a fever, and was groggy from all the medication she was given. 

Of course that meant Kyle and I were also miserable because we had to watch her be in so much pain and get so frustrated by her hands. Poor sweet girl!

They gave Layla some oral sedatives so they could try to conduct an EEG, but all that proved to do was make her super loopy and uncooperative so they couldn't actually perform the test. One of the cutest, but saddest, things that day was when we were sitting outside of the EEG room and I was supposed to be trying to get Layla to go to sleep. She was loopy, miserable, and doing anything but going to sleep, and she also had all sorts of goop in her hair from the attempted test making her hair all clumpy. A phone rang in the background and Layla put her little IV padded hand up to her ear and said, "Hello?" Gave us a laugh but was also so pitiful!

I got upset with the nurses that they kept trying to force her to sit still to take this test when she clearly had a fever and felt miserable so I asked to talk to a doctor and a young male doctor who had seen Layla up in the PICU (he was my favorite we saw) came and agreed with me that we should just let her rest and stop distressing her with the test. So we took her back up to the PICU and she slept for 4 hours solid.

Layla woke up from her sedated sleep and immediately her fever started rising rapidly again. I could tell another seizure was in the future because she started trembling again and acting the same way as earlier in the day, so I told the nurses to get the doctor in and they started sponging her down with cold water. It took an hour of sponging, and she hated every second, but her fever eventually came down without her having a seizure. Victory!

The next couple of days were a battle of her fever not going away, a couple more sponge baths, and lots of tests. They did an MRI on Monday just to be sure that her seizures weren't more serious than febrile, which came back clear (we're supposed to go back in a couple of weeks to do the EEG). She came out of the anesthesia just fine. 

It turns out she had a really bad urinary tract infection caused by E Coli (very common). Her infection numbers in her blood on Friday were in the 60s, and on Sunday they spiked up to 140 (I don't really know what that means), so the pediatrician told us on Monday that she wanted us to stay in the hospital until Friday so that Layla could continue getting the stronger antibiotics through the IV instead of switching to oral. Needless to say, that was very disheartening news. The idea of staying cooped up in the hospital that long was not very appealing, but we knew we wanted to make sure Layla really got better and the infection didn't come back. 

Over the next couple of days Layla started feeling so much better and acting much more like herself. On Monday morning they switched her IV from her hands to one in her arm, and that made her much happier because she could use her hands.

She was also really cute in her little hospital gowns :)

Layla got better and better. Monday she still had a fever off and on but they never had to sponge her down or give her extra fever medicine. Her 3rd IV only lasted until Tuesday night till it got too tight and stopped working, so they had to take it out and put a 4th IV in her other arm. Let me tell you, holding her down while she got IVs was so sad and so heartbreaking. But she was such a trooper.

Eating some lunch

They had this nice little courtyard area that was sort of outdoors but still covered with a glass roof right outside of our room, so Layla loved walking out there.

Layla was a celebrity at the hospital. Random hospital staff would stop in our room just to look at Layla with no other purpose. The nurses taking care of her just loved her and were all competing to get her to like them best (none of them really won because they were the ones inflicting pain on her, ha!) 

On Wednesday night, Layla's 4th IV made it long enough to get her 10 p.m. antibiotic treatment in, but toward the end I noticed that the gauze wrapping her IV was wet, which meant it had been leaking. The nurses called the doctor up (the young guy, yay!) and I asked if they could just take that IV out for the night since they obviously couldn't use it again in the morning for her next dose, so she could sleep well that night. He said yes and took it out that night and said that the lady pediatrician would just put a new one in before her 10 a.m. dose the next morning.

Thursday morning Layla was acting so happy, IVless and free. She hadn't run a fever since Monday, and I was just dreading her having to get a 5th IV. When the pediatrician came in she mentioned that she wondered if Layla could switch to oral meds, but said she still thought it would be better to do the full 7 days of IV meds, so she had them bring in the IV kit. She was looking for a vein in Layla's arm but she still had some sticky stuff on her arm from the last IV, so the doctor told me to give her a "proper bath" and that she would be back to do the IV. She took forever to come back and I was starting to get frustrated, but while she was gone Kyle and I were texting back and forth about trying to convince her to let Layla go home that day (Kyle was with Landon at this point). 

By the time the doctor came back, I didn't even have to convince her. I asked if it was possible to switch Layla to oral, and she immediately said yes. During the time she was gone she looked back at Layla's urine test results and said the specific type of infection she had was responsive to oral antibiotics, so she thought it would be good to switch her over and discharge her that afternoon.

What a huge answer to prayer!! By this time Layla and I were going stir crazy in that hospital room. There's only so many movies you can watch and even the iPad was losing appeal to Layla.

We had to stick around for awhile because they gave Layla one final shot of antibiotics, and then it took Kyle awhile to come back and get our bill paid and all the discharge instructions. We ordered pizza on the way home, and let me tell you, I don't think I've ever been so happy to walk in the front door of our flat!

 Just eating pizza like nothing ever happened.

I sure missed this boy while we were gone! It was so hard to be away from him! But our team was just INCREDIBLE and stepped right up to take care of him all week while we were gone. He got so spoiled with trips to the park, McDonalds, pizza and movie nights and dance parties...he probably didn't even want us to come back!

We're so thankful to be home and so, so thankful that Layla is healthy and back to normal. She's still taking antibiotics and we're keeping a close eye on her, but she's back to her ornery self already, getting into everything and playing with Landon. Thank you to all of you who were praying for Layla's recovery; we so appreciate it!

Here are two other random pictures:

 Layla had this sign hanging at the foot of her hospital bed that said "Vulnerable Patient." We thought it was hilarious. She just thought it was a toy.

This was the view out our window of behind the hospital. Pretty beautiful, huh?