Avery's Adventure: Another Holiday, Another Trip to the Hospital

Sorry that it has been awhile since the last post. We ALMOST made it through a holiday without spending any time at the hospital. Avery has been battling a cough for a few weeks and she has had a fever off and on for about the same amount of time. Avery was doing well on Easter. I thought she was fussy because she hadn't napped the whole day. We went to Tim's parents for dinner and Avery fell asleep on the way there. (They only live 4 streets away from us). Avery slept the whole time we were eating and woke up afterwards while we were sitting around talking. She was being fussy and didn't seem very happy and I thought it was just because she was still tired. She felt hot so we took her temp when we got home and it was 103. We gave her some tylenol. Before bed we gave her some Advil. She woke up screaming at 11pm. Tim went into her room and said she was burning up. We quickly gave her some tylenol and then took her temp. It was 105. She has never had a temp that high. She became lethargic and her eyes were rolling back in her head. We didn't know what to do so we called 911 and put a wet wash cloth on her forehead. Out of all the times Avery has been sick, I have never been so scared. When Tim was talking to the dispatcher on the phone, he was tearing up and could hardly tell them our address. The paramedics came to our house and she was still lethargic. They took her pulse ox and it was 98 so that made me feel a little better. They asked us a few questions and she became more alert. They said she was stable enough for us to transport to the hospital or they could take her to Parma. I asked them if she was ok enough for us to take her to Fairview and they said yes. Nothing against Parma Hospital but all of her records are at Fairview since its a Cleveland Clinic hospital. It made more sense for us to take her there.

We got to the hospital and Avery cried most of the time. They took her pulse ox (98) and her temp which dropped to 100.4. They did a chest xray and a strep test and said she was fine and sent us home. They probably thought we were crazy taking her to the ER.

I stayed home from work with Avery on Monday because she still wasn't feeling well. After alternating Tylenol and Advil the whole day, her temp never dropped below 100.7. When Tim got home from work, it seemed like every time she exhaled, she was in pain. We gave her a couple breathing treatments but she was inconsolable. She was crying no matter what we did. I texted her doctor (did I ever mention I love her doctor?) and she called me and asked us a few questions. We made an appointment with her on Tuesday at 10am at the Broadview Hts location. I knew that since she wasn't at Independence, that I would probably end up having to go to Independence anyway for blood work and xrays since the Broadview Hts office doesn't have that equipment there.

She looked Avery over and her temp was 100.6. ( I brought our thermometer with me to compare and mine said 100.4 so it was pretty close. I definitely believe the 105 temp from the other night now.) She was ok for a few minutes and she ended up crying and being inconsolable. Dr Love knows Avery and has seen her a million times and knew there was something just not right with her today.

I told her the night before that her gtube has been randomly leaking a little bit. She looked it over today and sure enough, Avery had some stuff on her onesie right by her gtube. She also looked at the fistula in her mouth and said it looked much bigger than when she saw her a few weeks ago. The plan was to flush out her ears, then go to Independence to get blood work and a chest xray and abdominal xray, then come back to Broadview Hts to go over everything. While I was doing that stuff, the doctor was going to call the surgeon regarding her gtube and the doctor regarding her fistula.

After some crying, we managed to get everything done and came back to Broadview Hts. Dr Love talked to Dr Seifarth regarding the gtube. For those of you that don't remember, he is one of the most beautiful doctors in the country..lol. He didn't understand why the attending doctor put her gtube in went it fell out in February. According to him, the doctor should have called a surgeon to do it so it's possible its not in the correct place. We agreed to make an appointment with Dr Seifarth's office, get it looked at and most likely exchange it for the mini button.

She also called Dr Doumit and he said the only way the fistula would have gotten that big was due to physical trauma, meaning something she put in her mouth poked and split it open. She doesn't put very many things in her mouth these days so I have no idea what it could have been. We are going to move up our appointment with Dr Doumit to sometime in May.

Dr Love looked in her ears and there was no sign of infection. If I was ever hoping for Avery's ears to be infected, today would have been the day. It would have been a simple fix and it would have explained the fever and random fussiness.

We went over the xrays and she said that it looks like Avery has a little bit of atelectasis (where part of the lung collapses or doesn't inflate correctly) and bronchiolitis. She said she wasn't concerned about this because her pulse ox was good and if this was causing her discomfort, it would be constant and not like the intermittent pain she is having. This was not the cause of her random fussiness.

She said she got to thinking when I called her on Monday night about the random bouts of fussiness and what could be causing it. She thought maybe it could be intussusception, where a piece of bowel slides into the next, much like a telescope. This could cause a bowel obstruction and one of the main symptoms is sudden loud crying or grunting which was exactly what was going on. Another symptom of this would be bloody stool. Avery has not had any bloody stool but she decided to check anyway. She then gave Avery a rectal examine , said the stool felt hard, and examined the stool to see if there was blood. No blood was noted which was a good sign.

After that Avery had to get a catheter inserted to get a urine sample. I was the lucky person to hold her legs. She is soooooo strong...or maybe I am a wimp(which is likely) but I had trouble holding her legs. The initial urine test came back negative but we have to wait for the sample.

Doctor love told us to go home and wait for the other bloodwork to come back. She said if some of her tests came back elevated, we would have to go to the hospital.

We ended up putting Avery to bed around 9:45 on Tuesday. Around 10:30pm we got the call regarding her results and it wasn't the news we were hoping for....

Here are some pics from the past week...

I think it's time to baby proof the drawers and cabinets mom and dad.

Thanks Chuck and Heather for my bunny!

Thanks grandma and grandpa for my basket!

Puzzles at the library. I liked throwing all the pieces on the ground.

Playing with bubbles that were in my Easter basket from Grandma and Grandpa

Riding the tram at the zoo.. We could actually go up and see the monkeys! I hardly ever go up there because mommy can't lift my stroller onto the tram while holding me (remember she said she was wimpy) Daddy came to the zoo with us this time!