Well, Friday morning began as usual with Connor climbing into bed and wanting to cuddle. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for a few minor complaints about his leg hurting. What's new, right? He kept saying that he fell on one of his trains in the night, but it didn't really seem to be that big of a deal to him. I checked his leg and didn't find anything, so I took him downstairs for a bowl of cereal and went upstairs for my shower. When I returned downstairs, I found that he hadn't eaten his cereal and was asleep on the couch. This was at about 9 am. I left him alone, figured he must be coming down with something, and he ended up napping until 1:45 pm.
When he woke up, he had a fever and was complaining about his leg hurting fairly badly. I gave him some Motrin and he seemed to do much better. So much so, that I took him outside to ride his big wheel and he appeared to be just fine. We continued the Motrin the rest of the day, but in the middle of the night, it had progressively gotten worse!
At about 3 am, he CRAWLED down the hall, dragging his leg, crying, saying that his leg hurt. I asked him to climb into bed and he couldn't even stand up. I grabbed him, put him in bed with me, and he was BURNING UP! He was so hot that I had to take the sheets off of me because he was radiating that much heat. I checked his leg and couldn't find any bruising or even a spider bite. I gave him some more Motrin and we went back to sleep.
The next morning, he couldn't walk, sit up, or get out of bed. He was in a lot of pain. I looked at his leg again...looking for bruising, a possible bite, etc., and still found nothing. He couldn't go to the bathroom, he couldn't even lift his head so we could get him dressed. He was completely immobile. We called the doc and ended up taking him to the ER at around 1 pm. After about 5 hours of testing (MRI, x-rays, blood work, etc.), they ultimately decided to admit him. So, for the evening, Sean decided he would be the one to stay the night, and I would have to take Kade home since I was still nursing.
The next day (Mother's Day) I returned to the hospital for the day, while Sean went home to sleep. Throughout the day he began to get worse. His pain was intensifying and he hurt just to lay in his hospital bed. They didn't find anything on his MRI or x-rays, but his inflamation markers were up with 103 temp. We continued to monitor him the rest of the day and were told we would have to stay another night.
On Monday morning, I returned to the hospital and was told that they had to put him on IV morphine in the night and that he had spiked another fever. He was in terrible pain...just grasping the bed rails, crying and wailing. We tested his blood again and found that two of his inflamation markers were down, but his SED rate had risen. Hmmm. So, we decided to do a CT scan to see if we could discover anything new. Still nothing. No one even knew where to begin. It was so frustrating. He was apparently getting worse and we didn't know how to help. So, Fer and Liz stopped in that evening, and Fer and Sean gave him a blessing that we would find an answer.
Tuesday morning I returned to the hospital and the docs suggested a bone scan as our last resort. We were hoping for something to give us a clue as to what was causing this pain and fever. We also decided to fast the whole day for some sort of a lead into this situation. Later that afternoon, the bone scan came back and it was positive!!! Apparently he has a septic SI joint! What this means is there is bacteria festering in his sacral iliac joint and if we don't stop it, Connor could have permanent damage to his joint. This usually occurs, say, in the hip where the doctors are able to extract fluid and therefore able to test it and match the appropriate antibiotics to the bacteria. Unfortunately, we can't do that. So, here we are, experimenting with various antibiotics, hoping we can stop it before there has been damage.
So, here we are! It's been 12 days now and we are currently experimenting with antibiotics, only hoping his pain will decrease enough to pull him off the IV's, in particular the morphine, and hoping we can get him to begin physical therapy to start walking again. It's still going to be quite a few more days before we will know if these are working. If they are, then great...we move forward! If not, then we have to start a new batch of antibiotics and keep trying.
Once we get it under control, and he's off of the IV's and walking, then he'll be able to return home. However he'll still be on oral antibiotics for at least 6 more weeks and have to return to the hospital for blood work each week to make sure his liver is functioning properly due to the extended stay on antibiotics. (The picture of him asleep is what happens after they give him the morphine).
So, this has been the last 12 days thus far, and we still have a few days left in here. We're taking him for strolls in the wheelchair and trying to get him out of bed and walking a little. Sean has been pulling the night shifts and going through finals in school, and I've been doing the day shifts with the kiddos and taking Kade at night. We've been pretty lucky that there is a Children's Hospital only a mile from our house, however they did consider transporting him downtown at one point to the main Children's Hospital campus. So, we're fortunate we are close to the house and we've had soooo sooo sooo many people help with bringing food and treats, and coming to visit! In fact, there is one picture of Connor with his little "girlfriend" Jade. We are sooooo grateful to everyone that has been bringing us food and praying for an answer! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!
