Last week, Joshua got a pretty bad infection. We ended up spending a little more than 4 days at Primary Children's Hospital. I am so grateful we have a very good children's hospital nearby, particulary considering we have put it to good use with our last two kids. At the same time, I hate that place. If we never have to go up there again, it will be too soon. Spending the better part of a week in any hospital with a sick baby leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, no matter how kind the nurses are or how competent the doctors are.
Anyway, here's the story on how we ended up in the hospital. On Tuesday Joshua had a fever, it came and went all day, and finally in the wee hours on Wednesday, we decided to take him to the ER just to be safe. I'm glad we did. They took urine, blood, and spinal fluid samples. All three came back with signs of infection. Thanks to the results of that initial test on the spinal fluid sample, extra precautions were taken, just in case he had bacterial meningitis (anyone who came into the room was wearing a mask and a robe for the first 24 hours). Thankfully the culture came back clean, so no meningitis. His urine and blood, however, had bacterial infection. They think he just had a really bad UTI that spread into his blood stream. His kidneys were a little infected, but there don't appear to be any anatomical abnormalities that caused his kidneys to get infected, so once he finishes up his antibiotics we should be able to put all of this behind us and forget all about it. On Saturday the radiologist placed a picc line so we could administer the antibiotics intravenously at home, and on Sunday, we finally got to come home. Lindsay and I have gotten some practice flushing the iv, giving him the antibiotic, etc. over the last couple of days, so we're practically experts now. Hopefully, next Wednesday he'll be done with antibiotics, get the picc removed, and we'll never have to see the inside of Primary Children's Hospital ever again.
