Here we go again

I'm home for a quick nap and a much-needed shower after spending the last 24 hours at the PICU.

First, let me say that Monkey Man is doing better. They are giving him lots of high-powered antibiotics and his blood cell counts are moving back into normal range, which is very good news. But we still don't know what caused all of this.

Monkey Man's pediatrician from birth has been my sister's husband, R. He and the rest of the doctors and nurses on his staff have always gone above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to Monkey Man and his umpteen gazillion illnesses...and he's been there a lot. To the point where we almost have our very own exam room and drawer in the filing cabinet for his thick file.

When we moved last year, it became apparent pretty quickly that a 45- minute drive to my brother-in-law's office wasn't really practical - especially when we have several small practices here locally. We tried one out, liked it, and decided that if it was just the typical cold/sinus stuff, we'd take him there - but for the big guns, still take him to see R and his partners.

A week ago on Friday, Monkey Man told Joey when he picked him up from school that he didn't feel well and wanted to go to the doctor. When your 4-year-old asks to go to the doctor, you know it's not good. So I took him in to the local doctor on Saturday morning, where he was diagnosed with Hand, Foot and Mouth disease. I was a little skeptical because he'd already had it 2 other times and the symptoms just didn't add up...no sores, no high fever, and he had this odd rash on his elbow and his stomach hurt.

By Monday, he still felt punky and was still running a low fever - not to mention his sinuses were very congested. So I took him back in and made them run all kinds of tests...including a blood test. His white cell count was slightly elevated, but they didn't want to do anything and insisted it was still viral.

By Wednesday, the fever was gone so we sent Monkey Man to school a half-day on Thursday and almost a full day on Friday. On Friday, he didn't eat any lunch and by that evening he was running a fever of 102 again.

Yesterday morning, when I went to get him out of bed, he was absolutely hysterical because his leg was in excruciating pain and he couldn't put any weight on it. And his neck was stiff. And he had this odd purple pin-prick rash all over his torso, arms, and legs. I called the local doctor - and of course, the beeyotch appointment person couldn't "fit us in" until 11 AM. Joey started getting even more worried about Monkey Man so he suggested calling R to see what his opinion was. R told us to go ahead and bring him on in to his office.

Monkey Man looked horrible - white, almost translucent skin, huge bags under his eyes, very red/goopy eyes, and generally listless unless you touched his leg at which point he became worse than a wildcat stuffed in a burlap sack. R's nurse had already run blood cultures on him before R came in to see us - he looked at the numbers, did a quick assessment, and then excused himself for a minute.

In five minutes, he was back. He told us that he had contacted the head of the best pediatric ICU in the city and we were to go straight there - don't pass go, don't stop at admissions, just get there fast. Joey and I looked at each other and our hearts sank. R's initial assessment was that it was either meningitis or Kawasaki Disease, neither of which are very good.

To make a long story short, they ran a bunch of blood tests and did a spinal tap. Initial results have pretty much ruled out meningitis, although we have to wait for the culture to come back tomorrow before we can be 100% sure. There is no test for Kawasaki - it's done more by symptoms and process of elimination. The good news is that we have him at the best place possible and within the timeframe that we can avoid heart damage and long-term reprocussions.

Now - as of today, we have another 24 hours to go to wait on spinal fluid and blood cultures to be complete, but he is responding well to the antibiotics. He does apparently have tonsillitis, and Dr. D believes that perhaps Monkey Man developed some sort of toxicity in his blood as a reaction to the tonsillitis...but we won't know for sure without the cultures. And there may be a chance that we may never know what caused this.

So, it's a waiting game. He's better and out of danger that we know of, and when I left him this morning he was having a Starbucks Vanilla Bean Frappucino and watching "Ice Age" on DVD, so he's definitely better than yesterday. There is a small chance that he will be released tomorrow, but I am not getting my hopes up until we have more answers.

There are times in my life that I thought I wouldn't be able to bear another day on this earth. This weekend, I realized that maybe I'm a little stronger than I thought. I'm just wondering what else can be thrown at me before I crack.