A rough few months!

It seems like this fall has been tough health wise for our family this year.  We have all taken turns spreading viruses around, Strep throat and ear infections just to name a few.  In November we all had bad colds.  Poor little Luke had a horrible cough that kept getting worse.  We took him to his pediatrician and he heard wheezing and asthma attack like symptoms.  He was given a steroid breathing treatment and sounded a little bit better.  So we picked up a nebulizer from Homecare and albuterol to give him every 4 hours.  Dr.Later was going out of town for the weekend but told us to call him on his personal cell if things got worse.  Well trying to give breathing treatments to a child with sever oral aversion is a nightmare:(. Things did not get better, Luke refused the breathing treatments, and his fever grew higher.  I called his doctor and we were admitted to the hospital.  The Doctors and nurses on call said his lungs sounded pretty bad, with decreased movement on the right side.  They thought for sure he had pneumonia and pleural effusion (which is fluid around the lung that needs to be surgically drained).  So he was started right away on IV antibiotics and cultures were drawn.  The antibiotics would cover pneumonia or a central line infection.  Chest x-rays were taken which showed no pneumonia or pleural effusion.  Cultures grew with in 12 hours and we knew we had an other line infection;  Coag negative staph the 3rd line infection in 5 months.  Luke's ID doctor was not happy to see us with a line infection again and talked about possibilities of replacing his central line.  But each central line is precious to Luke because it is his life line.  Luckily we were able to clear the infection and were were sent home after 6 days in the hospital with IV antibiotics (Nafficillan) for the next 3 weeks.  Little did we know our time home would be short lived, an updated post to come..........

 The hard thing about this hospital stay was that Lukie was in isolation.  Luckily child life brought in lots of fun things to keep Luke entertained!

 A hospital stay would not be complete without a new cape!

 Playing doctor!