Logan's Hospital Stay

So I need to blog about this because it basically consumed the entire month of May for my family but I haven't been wanting to relive it. It was the most emotionally and physically draining thing that we've been through but it still needs to be recorded, so here goes:

I last picture on my previous post of the boys wrestling with Maddie looking on was taken on Sunday night (May 1st). Logan was smiling and wrestling with the kids after church just like normal. We went out to Peter's parents house for dinner and he fell asleep on the way out there which he often does because he doesn't get a nap on Sundays. So when he woke up after only a 15 minute nap we was still a little groggy and tired, which was to be expected. He wasn't really interested in eating dinner and was kind of clingy and fussy, but we assumed it was because he was still tired. He didn't have any symptoms and wasn't sick at all. On the drive home he was kind of quiet so I looked back and his head was kind of slumped forward and he looked like he was asleep. So I asked Maddie who was sitting next to him to help push his head back or to the side so he would be more comfortable, and when she did Logan said, "Hey! Don't!!" and he put his chin back down toward his chest for the rest of the drive home. Weird, but no big deal. Then we got home and he wouldn't lay back on his pillow, he kept trying to pull his head back up. So we propped another pillow under him and he slept in a semi upright position. In the middle of the night he woke up crying, which he doesn't normally do. So I went in to check on him and he had a little fever. I gave him Tylenol and he was still pretty uncomfortable so Peter gave him a blessing and he went back to sleep.

Monday morning he woke up and still had a little fever. I gave him some more Tylenol and asked him if he wanted some breakfast, and he said no and asked to watch Bubble Guppies instead. So I turned it on and he asked to snuggle in a blanket. So I wrapped him up and he sat on the couch watching cartoons and kind of drifted back to sleep on and off all morning. His fever never really broke and he didn't look very comfortable at all, he still preferred to have his chin down to his chest and his mouth was kind of hanging open. By that afternoon when he still wasn't moving his head at all I decided to take a closer look. Until this point I assumed he just had the cold/flu that the rest of my kids had had (fever, sore throat, super tired, cough...) but none of them ever stopped moving their heads so I checked the lymph nodes below his ears and felt a huge bump, which happens sometimes with colds so it wasn't too alarming, it was just his lack of neck movement that had me worried. Peter was working from home that day and I asked him to come in and look at him. He thought it was weird too and we both felt all of the sudden that we really needed to take him into the Doctor. I hadn't even showered and was still in my jammies because I'd been holding Logan for most of the day, but I went upstairs and threw some clothes on and threw my hair into a ponytail and headed out the door.

Something told me that I needed to hurry even though he hadn't even had symptoms for a full day. I didn't make an appointment I just got in the car and called the Doctor on the way there and told them I was on my way. They got me in right away without having to wait. Logan still had a fever and still had not eaten all day. He had a sippy cup with apple juice/water that he'd been working on all day so luckily he wasn't getting dehydrated. The Dr was immediately concerned about his neck and head movement and told me that I needed to go right to the Hospital and get some blood work done on him to rule out Bacterial Meningitis. He said he didn't look sick enough to have meningitis but that he had several of the symptoms and we needed to rule it out and he also prescribed Tylenol with Codeine to make him a little more comfortable and asked for my cell phone number to be able to get a hold of me right away as soon as he heard back on the results. We got the blood work and they told us that some of the tests they ordered can take up to 24 hours to get results from, so I wasn't expecting to hear anything for quite awhile. I left the hospital and went to fill his prescription and before it was even filled I got a call from one of the Doctors at the practice who told me that my Doctor had just left for the day but that the hospital called with the initial results from some of the blood work they had done and Logan's white blood cell count was more than double what it should be and he told me that I needed to go right back to the hospital so that they could do a spinal tap and do some further testing. I was shocked but left the prescription unfilled and headed out to the car. Before I even left the parking lot I got a call from MY Doctor who told me that the hospital had called him and he suggested that we skip the spinal tap and go directly to Utah Valley Hospital where a good friend of his who happened to be a Pediatric Infectious Disease Specialist was there waiting for us and we needed to be admitted immediately and we could do the testing down there. Again, I was shocked. I called Peter's parents to see if they could come out and stay with the other kids and then called Peter and told him I was on my way to get him and told him what was going on. After the Doctor visit he had googled bacterial meningitis and was really nervous about what he had found. So I got home and picked up Logan's favorite blanket and his stuffed dog and we headed out. I don't think the fact that he had told us we'd need to be admitted immediately had really sunk in yet and I was still thinking they would just keep us there and do the testing and monitor him for awhile and then we'd come home, so I didn't bring anything but the diaper bag and those two comfort items for Logan.

When we got there the Pediatric Infectious Disease Specialist was indeed waiting for us and he took us right back into an exam room and checked Logan out. Logan was in so much pain he just sat there with his mouth hanging open and didn't really complain about everything they were doing to him. They poked him and drew blood for a ton of tests in addition to the ones they did earlier and said that we were going to have to do a lumbar draw (which is basically a spinal tap) and got him all suited up in the hospital gown. He said that his initial reaction was that it was not bacterial meningitis but we'd need to do all the tests just to be sure. He said it was more than likely just a really bad bacterial infection and it looked like he might have an abscess and it would likely need to be drained with surgery through his throat. They ordered a CT scan to get a better look and said they'd go from there. He told us to expect to be in the hospital for at least 2-3 days. At this point I think the severity of what we were facing kind of set in and I realized that I was completely unprepared to be staying at the hospital with him, I didn't even have a toothbrush.

After the CT scan they decided they did not need to do the lumbar draw since they saw at least one large abscess in the tissue behind his throat. They said that if we wouldn't have come in when we did he could have been in critical condition. An abscess of that size was already starting to restrict his airway and if it started draining puss it would go straight into his lungs and that would be really bad. They consulted an Ear Nose and Throat specialist and decided that the did need to do an emergency surgery to try to drain the abscess. They said there was a substantial risk in doing the surgery since his airway was already so constricted and surgery often causes more swelling, they were worried that they might have to insert a breathing tube. They called down to the Operating Room and rearranged the scheduled surgeries so that they could get Logan in as soon as possible. At this point the Doctor told us that after what they found he was guessing we'd be in the hospital for 3-5 days. He was really lethargic and his heart rate was super high just from his fever as well as his little body working so hard to fight the infection. It was so sad to see.

After the surgery they told us that they went in and said that we had come in so early that the abscess hadn't formed any puss yet so there was nothing to drain. All of the swelling that they had seen in the CT scan was ALL swollen tissue. If we would have waited to bring him in and it HAD started forming puss it would have completely constricted his airway and been ENORMOUS! We felt so blessed that Heavenly Father was watching out for us and prompted us to bring him in right away. The surgery was pretty non-evasive since they went in through his mouth into the back of his throat initially and then when they didn't find any puss to drain they were able to take a needle and probe in a few places in his neck and below his ears to see if any of the other abscesses and points of swelling had puss (which they didn't) but they didn't have to cut him open at all, so there wasn't any post-op pain or recovery. They put him on several heavy duty antibiotics right away and said that should keep the abscess in check and it shouldn't get any bigger and shouldn't form puss with the antibiotics in his system.

Peter's mom stayed at the house with the kids that first night and my mom drove up the next day from California to be here with us. I slept down at the hospital every night with Logan. Initially we thought that Peter and I would trade off staying with him but I just couldn't bring myself to leave him and Peter couldn't concentrate at work and ended up just bringing his laptop into the hospital and getting a little work done from there. The morning after his surgery he was in quite a bit of pain and we ended up giving him morphine to calm him down. He went right to sleep and slept for several hours, during which time I left him with Peter and drove home to shower and pack a bag of clothes and books and get my phone charger and things like that. I hadn't seen the kids the day before since I left to take Logan to the Dr the minute they got home from school and then had been in the hospital ever since. So I called to make sure Logan was still sleeping and doing well and then stopped in at the school to say hi to each of the kids.

When I got back to the hospital they were talking about needing to put in a PICC line so that they didn't have to poke him several times a day for his blood draws (he was having to be tested regularly to check his white blood cell count as well as the inflammation/infection levels) and it would also enable them to give him medication directly into his PICC since he would likely have to be on antibiotics for several weeks and this way we wouldn't have to give them to him orally. A PICC line is basically an IV that is inserted into your arm (usually above your elbow crease) and it is fed through your vein directly to your heart. The IV is sewn into place on your arm with stitches and has a cap on the end for drawing blood or inserting medicine or fluids or whatever.Click on this sentence to go to a link where you can read more about what a PICC line is. So they went ahead and did that (the top picture above is his PICC line in between cleanings and bandage changes that we took several days after we got home from the hospital). They gave him some medicine that kind of sedated him a little but didn't need to put him under because he was still pretty lethargic from not eating and from being in so much pain. He didn't really respond much to anything except for occasional groans and whimpers. When we came back in after they put his PICC line in he was SUPER groggy and loopy! It was sad but SO FUNNY! They asked him if he wanted a popsicle, we were surprised that he said yes since he still hadn't eaten since Sunday night. He had an IV in and was getting fluids and nutrients that way but hadn't actually eaten anything. So after several attempts to actually get the popsicle to his mouth (he kept missing his mouth and putting the popsicle on his forehead and onto his cheek - his coordination was less than stellar) he licked it a few times and actually ate part of it. He said a few funny things while he was all drugged up too. Every word was super slow and drawn out and slurred. He noticed me taking a picture of him and said, "Cheese!" and he said, "Ice Cream" and it was just really funny to hear him trying so hard to talk to us when he was so heavily drugged. Poor boy.

His fever still hadn't come down even though he'd been getting some Motrin through his IV and he needed another dose of morphine later that day as well. His white blood cell count was still up more than double where it should be (even higher than the day before). The Doctors didn't seem concerned about it since he was on the two types of antibiotics. He said he had a REALLY bad bacterial infection that his little body was trying to fight and he expected that the numbers should start coming down in the next day or two. They told us again that we'd be there for at least 4 or 5 days still as he was healing and fighting the infection. He spent most of that day sleeping and then fussing and crying while he was awake. But he did have a little while where he actually smiled (first time since Sunday) and played with a few toys that they brought in for him. Peter's mom was still with the kids at our house and she brought them in that evening (Tuesday) to see him since he seemed to be feeling a little better. The kids all missed Logan a lot and were really worried about him and I really needed to see them too. It was so hard to see Logan in so much pain and having such a hard time and it made me love all of my sweet kids so much and being away from them was really hard. Logan was excited to see the kids but it wasn't long before it started to be too much for him and he needed some more medicine and went to sleep.

The next few days were a blur of ups and downs for little Logan. He spent most of his time sleeping or fussing every once in awhile having an hour or so of happy playtime. You can see in the picture above all of the monitors they had him hooked up to while we were there. He had "stickers" on his chest to monitor his heart, a "sticker" on his foot to monitor his oxygen levels (since his airway was constricted they needed to make sure he was getting enough oxygen), the blood pressure cuff on his leg (since the PICC line was in his arm) and then his PICC line that had a few different tubes coming out of it that connected to an IV pole by his bed. At one point during the night on Tuesday he was pretty miserable and the nurse that was in getting blood samples from his PICC line was making stickers of his name and information to stick on the tubes for the blood and he asked Logan if he wanted a sticker. He was in a nasty mood and his eyebrows were all pulled together and he answered in a super pouty and sour voice, "yes". So the nurse gave me the sticker and Logan stuck out his hand where he wanted his sticker to go and I put it on for him. He kind of smiled a half smile and then stopped dead and looked at all of his other "stickers" and monitors and tubes and everything and then looked back down at his hand where this new sticker was placed and then he shoved his hand back at me and said, "HEY! Don't!!" Lol! Cute boy had enough stickers and certainly didn't want any more, especially if this one was optional.

Logan still hadn't eaten any solid food on Wednesday morning. We got him a sippy cup with apple juice in it and he would occasionally drink a little bit, but at the end of the day he still hadn't even finished drinking that one cup of juice. We tried to bribe him with cookies and after a ton of coaxing he took an oreo, opened it up, licked out some of the cream filling and then handed it back to us. We also got him to eat half of a graham cracker square (so 1/4 a graham cracker). He still had a fever that would spike every now and then and then come "down" to about 100* He threw up the Tylenol we tried to give him orally and we had to give him a Tylenol suppository at one point to try to get his fever down. His white blood cell count came back down to normal after the 2nd day in the hospital but the blood test that shows the level of infection in his blood was still really high and they were worried that since it hadn't started coming down that the abscess might be getting smaller and more condensed but might be starting to form puss and they might have to do another CT scan and possibly another surgery to try to drain it. We decided to wait until the next morning (Thursday) to see what the blood test showed and if the CRP levels were starting to drop at all before we did that though. We got him on a regular pain management schedule on Wednesday instead of just on demand, since when it was on demand the regular pain medicine seemed not to help at all and we had to give him morphine. The morphine sedated him so much that they were worried that it might be effecting his eating and energy levels and he wasn't improving the way he should. So he started getting pain meds every 4 hours and it made the HUGEST difference! Sweet boy started to be himself again! We had some of our good friends come in and bring us lunch and snacks and books and magazines to read and treats as well as a new toy for Logan to play with. After he woke up from a nap we showed Logan his new toy from his friend Bennett and he was so excited. He perked right up and started playing with his car and crashing it into things and he even laughed. It's so sad that these simple things were so exciting for us. They were such huge steps and such a relief to see our sweet boy smiling and laughing after several days without much emotion at all. He also started eating a little bit at this point too. He had a bunch of fishy crackers and some yogurt and apple juice and some more graham crackers. His fever broke on Wednesday night and stayed pretty much gone from then on.

The hospital had a big friendly dog that was coming around to visit any of the kids who were feeling up to it just to give them something to get excited about and a change of scenery. Logan was really excited to meet "Mouse" the enormous friendly dog that came to see him. :)

Logan had been on two different types of heavy duty antibiotics for a few days now and was starting to do a lot better but still didn't have much range of motion in his head and neck. The two pictures above kind of show how stiff he was. He would turn to look at things with either JUST his eyes or his whole upper body, he didn't turn his neck at all but he was put and moving around and wanting to get out of his bed (for the first time in several days) and drive his cars around the room. Peter's brother and his family also came to visit us and brought a new Thomas the Train book with 9 little train magnets in it and he loved it. His little bed was all metal so he had plenty of places to play with his little trains.

Wednesday night Peter's parents stopped by (my mom was now there at the house with the other kids and taking care of things there while we spent all day every day with Logan down in Provo) Logan was happy while they were there as well and Grandpa blew bubbles with him and he smiled and showed them all of his toys that he'd been playing with. It was a GREAT day! The doctor came in to check on him and told us to be prepared for when we started trying to take him off of the pain medicine schedule he was on. They said his good mood and increased energy levels were mostly likely only as a result of his constant pain management. I didn't care at that point, it was just SUCH a relief to see him happy I didn't care if it was medicine induced happiness or not. I just needed to see a glimpse of my sweet happy boy again and I got a whole day of it!

This picture was from Thursday morning when he woke up. Still super happy and smiling and I was starting to think we were really making a good turn and we'd be going home soon. The blood test for the morning showed that his CRP levels that indicate the amount of infection in his blood stream had dropped as much as they possibly could have for the day and his white blood cell count was still in the normal range. So since he was making improvements we didn't need to do another CT scan or surgery. The Doctor said that he was doing so well that he wanted to take him off of the scheduled pain meds and go back to on demand pain management and see how he did with that. He suggested putting him on a schedule to get Motrin every 6 hours though and that might help with the pain as well as the inflammation that was still coming down.

It was actually a really rough day off of the pain meds. He slept most of the day and when he was awake he was fussy and miserable and he lost his appetite again and stopped wanting to play and get out of bed. He just laid in his bed and slept of watched movies all day. It was so hard to see after such a good day the day before to have him back in pain. I realized how sick he really was and it just broke my heart. My mom brought the kids in that evening and he was so excited to see them as they got ready to leave he grabbed my hand and started pulling me to the door saying, "C'mon, go, car, home, kids!" He wanted so bad to go home with the other kids. We got him to take some pain medication by mouth that night and he didn't throw it up. We needed to get him used to taking medicine orally again before we could go home since we couldn't give him all of the medicine he needed through his PICC line (which they told us he would need to keep in for about 3 or 4 weeks)

The next morning (Friday morning) the blood tests showed that his CRP levels dropped again and they were confident that he was improving enough to come home. They told us that we had to be VERY careful that he didn't get any kind of virus after we came home for at least a few weeks because any type of virus would cause the bacterial infection to flare back up and we'd be right back in the hospital. This little piece of news made me really nervous since we have 4 other kids who each have twenty something kids in their classes at school and at least 10 kids in their classes at church and all of the neighborhood friends that they played with after school, the likelyhood of us being able to shield Logan from ANY virus let alone ALL viruses was super slim! And although I was ready to be home and be with my kids I was really nervous about taking care of Logan at home. He still hadn't come back to himself since we took him off the regular schedule of pain meds. He still wasn't eating and was still really fussy and clingy and still not moving his head and neck at all. I worried how I'd be able to take care of him and all of the other kids when I was having such a hard pregnancy and contracting constantly. It was a very emotional morning but I knew it would all be okay and my mom planned on staying with us as long as we needed her to help out, which was a HUGE relief since I was barely able to take care of us on my own these days anyway. My contractions had been so bad and I'd been in so much pain that I wasn't able to do much. So she stayed and got me all caught up on laundry and cleaning and organizing and getting things ready for the baby and taking care of all of the older kids so I could take care of Logan. It was wonderful! We finally signed the release papers around noon and left for home. Logan smiled so big as we wheeled him out of the hospital doors in his little wagon and said, "Yook, mom, tree!" He had been stuck in his hospital room for a week and had missed the sunlight and the trees and birds singing. The whole drive home he pointed to everything, "Yook, car! Yook birds! Yook mountain! Yook cycle (motorcycle)!" and then he'd ask "Mom, home? Kids?" and I assured him that yes we were going home now and he'd get to see the kids. He smiled and snuggled into the dinosaur blanket that they gave him in the hospital and played with the sunglasses and cute rabbit in a hat puppet that they gave him before we left. He was SOOO thrilled to be coming home!

When we got home he ran inside and ran around the house saying, "Home! Home!" and he ran up the stairs and into his bedroom and touched him bed and smiled and looked through a few of his books and then ran down the stairs again and kept calling out, "Home! Home!" I left Logan with my mom for a bit and went to the school for a quick Mother's Day program that Tyler and his class had been preparing for and I'm SO glad that I did. It was such a sweet thing and meant a lot to Tyler and it made me cry (ok I was sobbing as Tyler read me his poems for me and performed their sweet little presentation for all the moms - what do you expect? I'm super pregnant and hadn't seen my kids all week!). I missed all of the kids so much while we were in the hospital.

When I came home Logan wanted to go outside and ride bikes and jump on the trampoline and run around, so we let him. He was so excited and I was so relieved that he seemed to be back to himself again. He still didn't eat much but would at least take a few bites and he would drink milk in his sippy cup again so he was getting some nourishment. A Home Health Nurse was scheduled to come out every day to take blood samples and give him medicine through his PICC line, but she ended up teaching us how to do it and only had to come out once a week to get blood samples and change the dressing on his PICC. So that was good. We did have one little scare several days after we got home where the results from his blood tests came back really weird and so they came over and redid them and then she came back AGAIN to redo them at like 10pm and they were STILL weird so they sent us to the EMERGENCY room to do them again and do an EKG since the nurse had heard some abnormalities in his heart beat. It turned out that his blood was just hemoglizing and so they couldn't get a good reading. They said that happens sometimes with PICC lines so they had to poke him in the end to get a good blood sample to find out that he was indeed fine. It was kind of a bummer that we had to wake Logan up at 10:30 at night to take him to the Emergency Room and that we didn't get home until after 1:30. I was glad that my mom was still there with us and that she was able to stay with the sleeping kids while Peter and I went out for our late night adventure with Logan. :) After a few days of being home his appetite started to pick back up and he started to get some more mobility in his neck. We met with the Pediatric Infectious Disease Specialist regularly as well as our regular Doctor. And it wasn't until 3 weeks later that we finally got to take his PICC line out and declare that he was officially better!

At one of our last appointments with the Specialist that he told us that they had discovered that it was the common cold virus that had somehow started this whole thing. He didn't have cold symptoms until that Monday morning when this whole thing started and he was just a little congested but apparently the cold virus just happened to turn into a nasty bacterial infection in the nodes behind his throat and in his neck. He said there wasn't anything we could have done or should have done to have prevented it, it was just the luck of the draw that his cold virus turned bacterial and happened to escalate so quickly. Such a crazy thing that started by such a small thing that turned into almost a month of chaos! I'm just so glad that we were prompted to act quickly and take him in even though he hadn't even had symptoms for a whole day and I'm so glad that my Doctor was so on top of things and sent us to the hospital and arranged for the specialist to be there and that things were able to get moving so quickly. I don't want to think about what could have happened if one of these things had been delayed at all.

The hospital and the hospital staff were all AMAZING the whole time we were there! Everyone was concerned about US as parents as well as Logan. They kept offering to bring things to us and making sure we were comfortable and taking such good care of me being there so pregnant and they were all SO sweet with Logan while they were giving him medicine or checking vitals or doing anything. It was just such a relief to have such sweet, helpful, optimistic people around us through this whole ordeal and we just appreciated it so much. We also felt the prayers and support of all of our friends and family as people started finding out what was going on. It all happened so quickly that we didn't really tell anyone but immediate family at first.

Anyway, Logan is now 100% recovered and is as happy and energetic and sweet as ever and we feel so blessed to have him in our family. There was a time on that first day as we were driving down to the hospital that Peter and I both felt that there was a chance that we could loose him. That is not a feeling I ever want to have again. It was so scary and the only thing that helped us through was the peace that we felt after we each received priesthood blessings and as we prayed and felt the spirit comfort us and we knew everything would be okay. What a blessing in the midst of such a huge trial. It's so hard to see your little ones so sick, but we feel so blessed that everything worked out okay in the end. :)