Elia Medical News Pt 3: Hospitalized

Hopefully this is the last post describing anything that Elia/we are dealing with in new. Fingers crossed that anything beyond this one just becomes follow up postings and updates.

Let’s talk fever in newborns…<12 weeks old. If you don’t know or remember, it can’t go above 100.4 without sounding off alarms and requiring a trip to the ER. Well, last week, Elia sounded those alarms and bought herself a trip to the ER. Of course, this had to start when I was at the firehouse – at 1130 at night, none-the-less. Thankfully, her fever was ‘only’ 99+ around then, and my Mom was able to come and stay with Ahna to help out while I finished out the night at work. And while none of the three of us got good sleep that night, Ahna definitely had to dig deep to make it through a long, long night. Just before I got home, Elia’s temperature hit that magic line of 100.4, and off we went to the ER.

Elia got a full – and I mean full – workup in part due to her age, but also in part due to the belly button issue that in this instance turns itself into a direct access into her body. Spinal tap (times two), nasal flush, RSV test, flu test, urine collection, blood draw, and IV medicine and antibiotics made for a very long day. Due to the course of treatment, and the need to wait for cultures to grow for final determination of diagnosis, we found ourselves in the hospital for 48 hours…which seemed like a weird and unexpected blip in time. Ezra stayed with my parents, and we were again thankful for their proximity and his resilience.

Final diagnosis was actually something along the lines of pre-bronchiolitis – if there is such a thing. Basically it was simply a viral respiratory infection, but we were able to treat it and deal with it before it morphed into something more serious. Elia’s fever broke by the first evening, and the last part of the stay was merely precautionary and waiting on results.

It must be mentioned that this trip put us at Sky Ridge Hospital, which is the third hospital that we have spent time at in the past two years (Parker and Children’s being the others). While we have been impressed with all of them, and have had different needs/experiences at each, we were impressed with Sky Ridge as a facility and as a staff. While I don’t know that we received anything special, it was really reassuring to know some of the folks that we know there, and as they checked in on us and made sure that we had what we needed, it gave us another level of comfort in a sometimes uncomfortable situation. We were again reminded of the amazing extended family of the fire service and how far that sometimes extends. Thank you, Sky Ridge!