24 Hours in Room 769

Lauren had a fever early Wednesday morning.  In case you didn't realize, which I didn't, when you have a teeny baby and they get a fever, doctors take it very seriously.

So when I called Lauren's pediatrician expecting to just get a sick visit appointment, the nurse told me that I needed to take Lauren to the emergency room.  So off we went to Children's Hospital.

We didn't even get a chance to sit down in the ER waiting room.  (HUGE difference from when you go with a kid who almost poked his eye out...) They ushered us right back, skipped over triage, straight to a real room where the doctors were waiting for us and they got started right away.  Got started?  With? 

• A urine culture (so they had to use a catheter to get a sample of L's urine... she peed ALL OVER the nurse while they were doing it. Payback for what was to come?)
• A full "sepsis workup" with about 8 vials of blood drawn
• An "LP" (lumbar puncture, to get a sample of spinal fluid)
• A chest x-ray
• A mandatory observation period as an inpatient

The LP really wasn't so bad.  She didn't seem to really mind it at all.  Probably because they numbed her up pretty good before getting started.  The blood draw was horrifying.  They couldn't get a vein and ended up poking her SEVEN times before the ER doctor ordered them to stop and to call the NICU IV team.  Once the NICU IV team arrived, it was smooth sailing and they were finished with the blood draw AND the IV placement in less than 5 min.

So after they got all the fluids they needed to test and the x-ray, Lauren was admitted to CHP.  We went up to the 7th floor and spent the next 24 hours there.

Lauren never had another high temperature and here BP was good, she slept most of the time, and hardly even cried! 

The doctors decided that she was "low risk" for anything more than a virus, especially since Ian and Aaron both have/had colds in the last 2 weeks... so they discharged us.  It was possible that we might have had to stay the full 48, but I think everyone involved really thought that was overkill based on the whole story and the initial cultures all coming back negative. 

So we're home. 

Goodness it is never a dull moment around here. 

Sidenote:  the new CHP is BEAUTIFUL and our room was VERY nice.  I'm talking hotel-like, especially compared to the accommodations we had when Aaron was in the OLD CHP just before they moved operations to the new facility.