Well, we left to visit Aunt Jill & Aunt Tara on Friday morning (April 6). Joshua did well on the drive and we made pretty good time. Aunt Tara was still in the hospital from her surgery on Wednesday and I was able to get over to visit Friday night.
Saturday, we all went to the hospital to visit and while we were there she received her discharge orders. So we went home to wait. Aunt Jo and Uncle Phil came over for dinner, Tara was home by late afternoon, and we had a nice family dinner. After which we let Joshua dye eggs. Everyone left the room for that but he did a great job and didn't throw the eggs or drop them in the dye. His hands were pretty colors afterwards :-)
That night, at 10pm, Joshua awoke vomitting. He did it 3 more times before morning so we scrapped our Easter plans to head home. If we needed to see a dr we wanted to do it on our turf. He had diarrhea before we left and throw up in the car as we were driving out of town. Thankfully traffic was still light and we got home around dinnertime. We had been encouraging Joshua to take sips all the way home. He was showing signs of dehydration and we didn't want to end up in the hospital again, like Christmas. So when we arrived, Jason and Josh sat at the table and Jason provided him with a sip of whatever drink he wanted, rotating the choices and feeding fish crackers in between. He had some diarrhea before bedtime but no vomitting. We continued to wake him up every 30 min then hour through the night until 3 am when he seemed to be acting more like himself. He slept until 6:30 am and when he woke up he was in bad shape. He was asking for a drink but he was not himself. I fed him soymilk and we rested. Jason came down and we were discussing calling the dr when Josh threw everything he had just drank back up. We we got in the car to go to the emergency room. He was diagnosed with dehydration and seriously low blood sugar. It was a long morning, trying to push fluids through IV and sugar orally. They admitted us and we stayed in until Tuesday evening. He had more diarrhea and vomitting in the time but was acting more like himself.
He ate some crackers and drank orange juice last night for dinner and slept well until 4:30. I gave him soymilk then. In the morning he ate a good breakfast then had a really awfully diarrhea. We saw the dr at 10:15 and she said he was no longer dehydrated and to keep up with what we were doing inclucing introducing high calorie foods. He ate some lunch, took a good nap, drank some milk and then threw up everything from the day. After talking to the dr, again, she said it would be 2 steps forward, 1 step back and that this would last a while. I have just been trying to keep fluids in him. He had rice, crackers and a pancake for dinner and is now asleep. I will be waking him to feed fluids in the night.
It is so hard knowing that this situation can go from bad to worse in an instant inspite of our best efforts. The official name for what he has is 'rotavirus' and most if not all children get it at some point. It is highly contagious and not easily killed and lasts for a long time on inert surfaces. And, having had the virus you can still contract a different strain sometime later.
So, keep Joshua in your prayers that he will keep his food down and not return to the hospital.
I wish we could have an Easter 'do-over.'
