Saturday morning Hayden woke up at 6am crying. He usually sleeps to 7 or 8, so this was the first sign that he wasn’t feeling well. I rocked him for awhile until he started getting warm, I got a temperature reading of 99.9 just minutes after he woke up. I gave him Tylenol at 7am.

He started shivering as I held him so we called the Hemotologist on call, who called back immediately. Our options were to go to the ER or be admitted. Since the ER is germ infested and we would have to take hours to brief these doctors of Hayden’s history we chose to have him admitted. We are happy we did as he got very sick very quickly.

At 9am we arrived to the Peds floor at UW Children’s and we checked his vitals once again. His temperature was up to 101.5 and he was hot to the touch. He just layed there lifeless and whining in pain.

The lab techs came to draw blood for cultures but the hickman wouldn’t draw out, only flush in. This is the third time it has clotted and my biggest fear was infection in the line.
Once we finally got the line to draw, it clotted in the vials the first time and they had to draw more blood. They already took 10mls out, they took another 10mls and they cautioned me that he may need a blood transfusion. They nurses watched his blood pressure closely from that point on. It dipped as low as 45/25 and then they increased fluids which help increase the blood pressure.
He also was started on a general antibiotic till the test results could tell us what type of infection he had. At this point Hayden didn’t want me to hold him, he must have acked and he seemed to be ha

Within 6 hours the red lumin’s culture started to grow stuff, which means bacteria in the hickman line. The white lumin took 11 hours but did the same thing. So Hayden is being treated for a bacterial infection in the blood. To boot, his chest x-ray showed pneumonia in the right lung. He is now on an antibiotic to kill both these bacteria growths.

Today, Sunday, he woke up at 1am ready to play, we stayed up till 3am and played a little cause I was just so happy he was active and in a good mood. He started having bowel movements then too, which showed his kidneys working to get the access fluid out of his body. The nurse noticed he was puffy from too much fluid, so the fluid was slowed down to allow his body time to waste it.
By morning Hayden was up and walking and playing, he still had a fever of 100, but with Tylenol he felt good enough to play and eat. We all were so relieved.

We will stay at UW until all results come back for what type of bacteria he has,probably for another day or so. Vacomiacin is the antibiotic that he is on now.
We will keep you posted…

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