A little history, Part I

A few people have asked for a few more details about how we knew to take Michael to Children's Hospital so I'll give a little history.


First, let's start with some pictures of Michael from birth

And this one:

I know!  It breaks my heart in hindsight.  But it is true that Michael has been a pretty fussy, challenging baby.  It was tough because my little guy was pretty sad a lot.  But there were also very happy days.  And he has such a fun, engaging, loving personality.

Fast forward. Michael was 5 months old, strong, trying to learn to eat solid foods.  I was sure he would be sitting up within the next week and got out new toys and props to help him with it.

Then, about the first week of December, things changed.  He started to wake from sleep and scream inconsolably for an hour.  He refused to eat unless I gave him Tylenol.  He was "fussy" - a lot.  And something he had never done before -  he laid his head on our shoulder and just stared off into nothing.  He looked sick, but peculiarly, he had no fever.  And he cut his first tooth.  More days passed. On December 15th, he threw up for the first time and on December 19th I took him to our pediatrician to find out why he was sick.

Here is the list of symptoms I wrote down to shows the doctor:

The pediatrician checked for all the usual things - ear infection, sore throat, and flu. He didn't find any of them and doubted the symptoms were from a food allergy so he ordered Michael's blood to be drawn and tested.  I went immediately to the lab and felt like a crazy, overly protective mom making her baby go through the pain of needles because he seemed to cry a lot.  That night, the pediatrician called with the results:  high platelets, low white blood cells, absolutely no indication of a bacterial infection:  it must be a virus.  Give it a week and he should be on the mend.

So the week of Christmas came and went.  Michael cut his second tooth and he still wasn't getting better.  He was now throwing up every other day and sleeping more.  Sarah and Whitney wanted to re-enact the nativity with Michael as baby Jesus, but he was too sick or tired to lay in a laundry basket with them.  Then the week after Christmas passed.  He was throwing up every day and losing weight and milestones like holding up his head.  He didn't want to sit anymore and could no longer sit in his high chair.  He seemed like he still had the muscles to do these things but he just no longer wanted to do them.  He often just laid his head on my shoulder or he lay on my lap. And he cut his third tooth (does teething cause mysterious symptoms???) 

But it was also puzzling because there were times when he was mildly happy and would giggle a little.  He found his feet and would pull them to his mouth and pull socks off his feet.  Sometimes, he acted "normal."  But some things were not normal.  Like now throwing up every feeding. 

Then came the "run-around" week.  On Monday, January 2nd, I called to schedule an appointment with the pediatrician.  I asked for a well-ness visit for insurance reasons and the soonest opening was a week away.  When Tim heard that, he said, "Call them back and see if there is any way we can get in sooner.  Michael is just too sick to wait that long."  So I called back and begged the receptionist to get me in sooner and she relented and we went 2 days later, on January 4th.  Michael was vomiting multiple times a day now and often wretching when he had an empty stomach.  He was losing weight quickly and becoming dehydrated.  At the visit, the doctor noticed his head size had shot up.  But my kids have big heads, the doctor said, and still puzzled, he prescribed Prevacid for all the vomiting.  He said we could do x-rays of his digestive system in a week if the Prevacid didn't work.  I gave the medicine to him right away and he threw it right back up.  I called the doctor 3 times on Friday to ask for the x-rays of Michael's digestive system.  I tried getting him in on Saturday too, but we were told the soonest we could have it done was Monday morning.  I cried with Tim for a while as we were getting frustrated and felt like we were not being taken seriously.  Michael was sleeping 21-22 hours a day, constantly throwing up, and becoming very weak.   Monday morning rolled around.  We arrived at the hospital at 7:30 AM for our x-rays only to be told they had no record of us.  Someone had misplaced our paperwork.  I begged the receptionist to please look harder, please get us in for x-rays right then.  Thankfully, she did.  It was a 4-hour long study.  Michael drank white, chalky barium from a bottle.  He threw it up.  They had him drink more and luckily he kept it down.  They filmed he every 30 minutes to see how he digested the barium.  When it was done, the radiologist said, "Well, there is no evidence of reflux and nothing unusual with his GI.  I'll send this to your pediatrician and you should hear from him in a day or two.  Good luck!"

I went home and Michael threw up the rest of the barium left in his tummy.  We waited all day for the doctor to call and he didn't.  That night, Tim and I had a long talk and decided we HAD to do something about our baby.  We would take him to Children's Hospital in Denver as soon as possible the next day. That was a long night anticipating our trip to the Children’s Hospital. 

As a side note to this story, I just want to take a minute to put all of this into perspective.  Maybe it will help understand why we weren't sprinting to the hospital right away back in December.  Not only was Michael very sick and he needed my constant attention while he was awake, and my constant worry while he was asleep, I am a mother caring for 3 other busy children.  It was Christmastime so things were crazy busy.  I was going through a really sad time feeling rejected by some friends.  My husband’s work schedule and personal obligations seemed heavy.  In the one week alone right after New Year’s, we discovered our main toilet was leaking and rotting the floor and had to close it off.  Our two year old made a disaster with Desitin diaper cream and we had to close off the kid's bedroom because I had no time to clean it up.  The kids were in sleeping bags in the basement. Our car broke down. And the kids were making messes and floods all over the house.  I was trying to keep up with them while holding sick Michael and constantly changing my clothes and showering and laundering because of his constant vomiting.  I will admit that I went into my doctor in the middle of everything and got medication for depression.  It has been a very difficult and dark time.
Part II to come…