It all started the Tuesday before school got out for Christmas break. On the way to run some errands after school, Helaman told me his eyes had gotten hot at the end of school, and he thought he had a fever. His teacher told him to go outside for some from air, but he didn’t think it had helped. He felt a little warm, but not bad, so we ran our errands, and I took his temperature when we got home. He had a fever, and he said his throat hurt, so I made him an doctors appointment for the next day. He is prone to getting strep throat, and I figured if that is what it was, let’s knock it out fast so he will be better by Christmas for sure!
Our usual doctor was out of town, so we met with the other doctor in his practice. He didn’t do a culture, but after looking in his throat said it was probably strep and gave us some amoxacilin to start right away. Helaman was coughing a little bit at that point, but more like his throat was bothering him that needing to couhg. That night, Helaman’s fever got higher, and by the next night we were at 104. I called the nurse hotline to see if I should take him in to the emergency room, but she told me to just do what I could to cool him down and go to see my doctor the next day.
Our family doctor was back on Friday and they got us in right away. His fever was high, his glands were all swollen, and he had some tenderness in his abdomen. They sent us to the hospital to do blood work and then to get a ct to make sure he didn’t have appendicitis. Poor guy was miserable trying to drink all the water for the scan. It took two pokes to get a vein at the lab, and then the lady at the imaging place poked and dug forever trying to get an i.v. in. He was starting to panic, but we said a prayer and I sang to him while she did it, and he was ok. Finally, she gave up and went to get the doctor there to try and do it. He took one look at the bruises she had made on his arms, and said to forget it and do the scan without the contrast.
And we went home to wait for the results. Meanwhile, Helaman’s fever is now 105. I call the doctors office paniced, and they tell me to stick him in a tepid bath until it goes down. Poor guy had to sit in cold tub watching Phineas and Ferb for close to two hours before it got below 104, which was the target. I was giving him medicine regularly, but I couldn’t stay ahead of the fever.
The doctors office called with the results and said his scan was clear and his blood work showed no sign of infection. Their guess was that the strep had gone to mono, which was viral, and we couldn’t test for it for a few more days. We set a follow up appointment for Christmas Eve, which was the following Wednesday, thinking we could cancel it if the fevers had worn off. He pain in his abdomen was constipation, so we were to give him mirolax for three days to clear that up.
That night we were up at 105 again by midnight. I put him in a cold shower, and he was tired and miserable and screaming. I didn’t know what to do. From that point on I was waking him up every two hours to give him medicine, rotating between ibuprofen and tyelenol, trying to stay ahead of the fever. His fever never went below 101, and he spent his time hot or freezing.
He was exhausted, but that made sense with no sleep and constant fever and mono. He was still coughing, too, and that was increasing a little, but never a ton. My dad and Omar gave Helaman a blessing on Saturday and told him he would be healed, but be patient.
Monday morning the mirolax kicked in and we rushed to the toilet, which made him cough which made him gag which made him throw up. While on the toilet. It was like the nightmare everyone has when they are sick.
Tuesday was more fever and his cough was getting worse, but I figured we were going in on Wednesday anyway, so we would wait for that. He was a little out of breath coming up the stairs, but we assumed it was the mono exhaustion.
Wednesday morning we went back to the doctor. They were concerned he wasn’t better, and wanted to do another blood test to check for infection again. I mentioned the out of breath and coughing, and the doctor listened to his lungs, but didn’t hear anything. He decided to do a chest x-ray, just to be sure there was nothing go on in there.
We went back to the lab, and the technician got a vein right away. Then to the chest x-ray. Walking out of the hospital and across the street to the car, Helaman could not catch his breath until we were about 10 minutes down the road. He set next to me panting and exhausted.
He stayed down stairs to watch tv, and I went upstairs to wrap some presents, I hadn’t done anything yet to get ready for the next day. The doctors office called with the lab results first. They said everything looked good and still pointed to a viral infection. An hour later, my doctor called and said they had gotten his chest x-ray results, and I was going to have to take him to the UC Davis children’s hospital right away. He would call me back in a few minutes once he had him admitted. I called my mom to come get Isaiah, and Omar to come home from the store. I told the boys what was happening, trying really hard not to make it scary for Helaman. Trying really hard not to cry. It is still hard not to cry as I type this.
When Omar got there, we let the boys open the presents I had just wrapped for them, trying to keep things happy and light, and also because one of Helaman’s was a Nintendo DS which we thought would help in the hospital. The doctor called right before my mom got there and told us the hospital wanted us to bring him into the office and they were sending an ambulance. His whole left lung was white on the x-ray, meaning there was no air moving through it, and they wanted him to start getting monitored right away.
Mom came and got Isaiah, and we went to the doctor’s office. The put on oxygen monitor on his finger when we got there, and then we were just going to wait for the ambulance, which was 50 minutes out. I started reading The Best Christmas Pagaent Ever to Omar and Helaman. I had been trying to get Helaman to drink a lot, so a few minutes later he had to go to the bathroom. When he came back and put the monitor on his finger his oxygen saturation had dropped to 76. At that point our doctor and his nurse, our friend Heidi, hooked him up to oxygen. And we waited some more.
Eventually the ambulance team arrived, all four of them came bustling in the room. The doctor at the hospital wanted a blood draw and an iv before they left. Now it is important to me that the lady at the lab had just done a blood draw with no problem whatsoever, and Helaman had been hydrating all day, and had in fact, just gone to the bathroom. I think his veins get jumpy when they get nervous, I do not think he was ever dehydrated. But whatever the reason, the trauma team couldn’t get an i.v.. And Helaman got poked and poked. At a certain point, it starts looking an awful lot like torture. I had to go out in the hall, and Omar stayed, and then we had to switch because Omar was going to faint.
They eventually got an i.v. in his right hand, and a tiny bit of blood out of the i.v., and then the loaded him up on the ambulance and we were off. The i.v. was to re-hydrate him, which I still question, but no medicine was given through it at this time. One of the drivers was apologizing that the gurney isn’t that comfortable, but Helaman told him he thought it was great. We had been talking about how it was an adventure, and a Christmas he would always remember, so he wanted to document it all. I was trying really hard to reframe it away from scary and sad at this point.
When we got to the hospital there was a team of nurses and four doctors waiting for us who started working right away. They were concerned he had a pleural effusion, puss build up between the lungs and chess cavity, and would require surgery. We were told they were going to look for it first with an ultrasounds, trying not to expose him to any more radiation. Within minutes a portable ultrasound machine was in our room and they were imaging his chest.
After the technician and team of doctors left, four nurses came in to try and do a blood draw. They were very nice, but it was overwhelming, and even to me they looked like four witches hovering around his bed in the middle of the night. I think it would have gone better with just one. They took turns tapping and feeling and even poking, and none of them could get a vein. They gave up and decided to wait for the trauma team to come back. Everyone kept wanting to poke his hands, without even trying his elbows, which I was really losing patience with. He has never been hard to get blood from if you just did it normally, but now his veins were jumping because they were being literally tortured. And and this point we still had no medicine because they wanted a baseline blood draw first.
The doctors didn’t see the pleural effusion on the ultrasound so they sent us down for a chest x-ray. Helaman was hoping to get to go in a wheelchair, but his whole bed rolled out, so that was fun, too. Our nurses were trying really hard to help him have fun at that point. The radiology lab was down by the e.r., and people working down there on Christmas Eve were not cheerful like they were on the pediatric floor. They were just grumpy. The lab guy did let Omar stay in there and wear and apron during the x-ray, though. I didn’t now men don’t get kicked all the way out, but I guess they don’t.
Once we got back up to our room, we had a little rest, and then the torture started again. A different lady from a different trauma team was finally able to do the blood draw. She let me hold Helaman and say a prayer and sing to him, and he was able to relax enough that it worked fine. And then they added a broad spectrum antibiotic to his i.v. At this point he had been poked 14 times. During the last round, before it worked, I started having a panic attack, and had to work really hard not to freak out. Which is silly, I know, because I wasn’t getting poked, but it was breaking my heart. The things is, he held so still for all of it, and just cried and submitted. He never jerked away or tried to make them stop. He was so brave, and hurting so much.
We were told that the x-ray didn’t show the pleural effusion either, so now they wanted to do a ct scan of his chest. They were really sure it was there, but needed to see it to know how to proceed.
We finished the Best Christmas Pagaent Ever, and talked about the birth of Christ a little bit when midnight came. Omar fell asleep on the little fold out couch, and Helaman slept off and on. They would come check his breathing and i.v. and temperature a lot, so it was pretty interrupted. Around 2 they came to get us to go to the c.t. scan.
The lady that did that test was funny. She was kind of bumbling, if that makes sense. Like the absent minded professor. I was a little worried at first. The first thing she did was check how fast she could pump the contrast through his i.v. with saline. It was really painful because they stuck it in a tiny vein in a sensitive spot. She still had to give him the contrast, but she cut the rate down as much as she felt she safely could, and I had to leave the room with him crying in pain while she did the scan. But it was a tender mercy because the scan turned out amazingly clear, and we only had to do it the one time on the slow rate.
Back in our room, Helaman fell asleep pretty soundly, and Omar never even woke up through the whole test. I sat by Helaman’s bed and watched. There was baby that shared our room that would wake up and cry, and I remember going to find the nurse. At some point I went down to the cafeteria and got some food, it is all kind of a blur. Nurses came and went and I watched his heart rate and his oxygen. I could tell when his fever was going up because his heart rate would go up. So I would go get some one. I didn’t want it to go out of control again–it was so hard to get back down.
Sometime around 5 in the morning I woke up. I had been sitting in a chair at the foot of Helaman’s bed and had fallen asleep with my head on the footboard. It had only been about 20 minutes, but in that time Santa had come, and there were presents stacked up waiting for Helaman to wake up and see them. I will forever be grateful for that stack of presents in that moment. There is so much good in the world. The whole pediatric unit at the hospital was an amazing testament to human kindness. The whole floor was decorated from floor to ceiling with Christmas magic by volunteers. People did everything they could to make Christmas good for kids who had to be in the hospital that day. More people came later in the day, sharing their dogs, bringing more gifts, it was all very sweet.
In the morning the doctors told us that the ct scan was clear, and they were going to start him on a new antibiotic, azithromycin, for a-typical pnemonia. Helaman opened his special presents Santa had brought him, and we had lots of visitors. Grandma Elsa came first thing in the morning. She had spent the night in Yuba City so she would be closer, and brought Omar and I breakfast. Jesse came later in the morning with presents, burgers and fries, and some very welcome caffeine! And then my family all came and brought the stuff Santa had left for Helaman at our house and brought Isaiah to visit. I am so grateful for the people that love us in this life. We are really blessed.
After Helaman went to sleep that night, Omar went home to sleep and shower and I stayed and sort of slept on the little couch. We had another crying baby in our room that night, and the nurses still came to check on Helaman a lot, but it was much better than no sleep at all.
Friday morning the doctors made the rounds and told me we would probably be there a couple more days. Omar came back right after that, and we settled in for a long wait. Not long after Omar got back, a new nurse came on duty. I wish I knew her name. She was certain Helaman was doing great, and she thought we could get him and walking and maybe home that day. I was so irritated with her. It was the exact opposite of what the doctor had just told me, and I was too tired for her energy. We turned Helaman’s oxygen down, and he was doing good.
My mom also called me that morning and told me Isaiah was sick and throwing up now. He had woken up in the middle of the night and been throwing up since then. I went out to call and check on him, as a lab tech was coming into the room.
The hospital wanted one more blood draw to make sure everything was good. When I walked back in Helaman had lost it. He was trashing and screaming, and there was no way he was getting poked again. He kept saying it was just too much. And I don’t blame him at all. I went to where he was sitting and asked him if he wanted to say a prayer, which he did, and immediately calmed down. We said the prayer, and he sat and had his blood drawn while I sang to him. First poke, no problems.
Since I thought we were going to be there longer, I ran home to take a shower and then drove to my mom’s house to check on Isaiah. Poor guy was so lethargic and feverish and sick. It was really hard not to be able to take care of both of them. I am grateful for my family, who is willing to help even when it’s puke clean up.
I drove back to the hospital, and had just missed Llael and Luis who had come to visit. Helaman had been up walking around while I was gone, and was totally off oxygen. A little while later the doctor came in and decided we could be released that day after all. Omar got our prescriptions from the hospital pharmacy, barely in time, and we were out of there. I asked Helaman if he was excited to leave, and he said only partly. He really liked the adjustable bed and the staff at the hospital wanting to get him anything he wanted. I can’t say enough good things about UC Davis Children’s Hospital.
We finished the antibiotics at home, and at this last check, January 9th, Helaman was completely cleared to go back to all normal activity and sports.
We talked about it, later, and agreed that it had been a good Christmas. We had felt the Spirit in his little hospital room, and even without the presents and tree and fun, Christmas came just the same, just like in the Grinch.
My sweet Isaiah got better quickly. Omar went to get him that night, and he told us that he had prayed to get sick instead of Helaman so Helaman could come home, and that’s why he was happy he was sick, because his prayer had been answered.
Are these the blessing that come from afflictions?
I have to say, as a mom, this has been heart breaking, and eye opening. I had to slow down and focus on my kids and my home. And it has really helped me remember what am I doing here, what kind of mom I want to be, and what I mean to make my life about. Sometimes it is easy for be to get distracted by doing all the other good things in the world, and I forget that they are my “best.”
