I hope to finish the retelling of this story here, now so that it can be closed in 2006 and not revisited ever again! So, the urgent care dr. diagnosed Joshua with Fifth's disease, which is a virus. They made their diagnosis based on the rosy cheeks that he had developed that morning on the ride from Vegas. I asked about his lack of eating and drinking and my concern for dehydration and the dr said that he was ok, that once he got the medicine in him then he would start eating and drinking again. As long as we could get a little water in him every hour, he would be fine.
We returned home, picked up the script for Zyrtec and gave it to Joshua. He was pretty sleepy. We had a wonderful visit from the Owens side of the family and then Christmas Eve, Trina and I went to church. The guys and Mom and Dad O stayed home preparing and putting Joshua to bed. It was a nice service and it felt good to be at church.
Christmas - Joshua woke up a few times in the night and when he did I offered milk to him to drink. He had a few sips. He woke at 6:30am for the day and I brought him back to bed and gave him the bottle to finish. He finished it... and then threw it all back up on himself, Jason and me. Needless to say, we JUMPED out of bed and ripped the sheets off and then went to clean ourselves and Joshua up. The morning after that was fairly normal. Joshua was very tired but he did show interest in some of the wonderful presents that Santa, Grandma, Papa, Aunt Trina, Uncle Josh, Mommy and Daddy had brought for him. He got a Radio Flyer Tricycle and some very adorable clothes (to name a few things). He ate a couple of bites of food and had a few sips of water all morning. The lack of eating and drinking was getting scary. We gave him his next dose of medication when he was supposed to have it and took him for a walk, he fell asleep so we put him down for a nap. The rest of the day/evening was very business with the big family Christmas. He was very clinging, he continued to not eat and drink and he threw up once on Jason and then once when we went to put him to sleep. Finally, at 9 or 10 when the festivities had come to a close I was able to look up some information. The fifth's diseas diagnosis had been worrying me because he should have been getting better. When I checked the internet, I found that he only had one symptom of the virus, the rosy cheeks, but he had about 8 of the symptoms of dehydration. The site said we should be feeding him a teaspon of liquid a minute but he would take anything. I started trying everything to get him to drink - we had already tried pedialyte, pedialyte pops, water in a glass, milk, an eyedropper of fluids, nothing was working. I set a timer and tried to feed him fluids in his sleep. It worked once. Jason came in around 11:30 from the living room - we decided that it was time to seek help and called our dr in maryland. The dr said he needed to go to the emergency room. So at midnight on Christmas night we headed to the hospital.
The wait was two hours before we were seen. Once the Dr. examined him and determined that he was indeed dehydrated, she started him on an iv drip of 200 mL per hour. He screamed hysterically for one hour until they gave him tylonel with codeine. He was admitted to the hospital at 5am and the drip was decreased to 10 mL per hour. Once hydrated they needed to try and get him to want to eat and drink on his own. That finally happened on Tuesday evening but the dr. had already scheduled to have him stay the night and I was grateful that he would be in hospital one more night under supervision. They discharged him Wednesday morning at 10:15 am. He was a different boy - alert, playful, skin bright and full, lips no longer dry, eating and drinking.
We went back to Grandma and Papa O's house to nap and get ready for our red eye flight home. Joshua did well on the flight. I thought with the cold and congestion that he still had he would scream the whole way but he was ok. He had diarhea on the first leg but the dr said to expec that. We got into our home airport at 8:45am and were home to our house at 11:30 ish. Grandma V came home with us to help and we mostly just ate lunch, took care of the dogs and napped. That brings us about up to 3:25pm Thursday, where I began typing this story.
Joshua is doing great now. He is bright and happy. He is eating well and he will never remember any of this. If only Mommy and Daddy were so lucky. We will be happy to ring in the new year and put the last week behind us.
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