The Illusive UTI

Our grand adventure started this past Sunday, as I stopped by James David's dad's to pick him up after work. Dad said he had been clingy all day, and when I pick him up I immediately know why. He's running fever. 101.5. And he has this weird rash on his left thigh. Well crap. On the way home I call the Ped's after hours line. Like always, because he has a VP shunt they tell us to head to Children's ER.

Upon arrival I tell the triage all about his condition and show them the rash. Because he has a shunt we go straight back (Probably the only perk from it is no waiting rooms). Since he is running fever they give him some motrin and it almost instantly (as quickly as motrin can) resolves. Since we had two shunt revisions last month, they are very worried about infection. They do a head CT, shunt series x-rays, a shunt tap (getting almost no CSF), and (bc I requested) a urine analysis.After all this they tell us they can't really find anything, but they are gonna run a few more tests and admit him for observation (Talk about making you feel like a lab rat in a science experiment). 

So there we were, home sweet home on 6NW. Our favorite wing of the hospital because they have the best rooms and the least pushy nurses. Only to my dismay, as we enter the room I find that it is missing my two favorite things: the window and the couch. Upon further investigation I learned that they had to put in a stair case to go to the new wing of the hospital and so they had to shorten that room, but not to worry they weren't allowed to keep us there more than 23 hours because we could go crazy not knowing the time of day with no window (real encouraging). 

The next day came and we met with the neurosurgeon who was very confident that it was not a shunt issue. (Praise the Lord). So he passed our case along to the urology team. After much ado, they determined that it was a minor UTI (How hard is that to figure out really? Either there is an infection or there isn't.) But I learned this from our neurosurgeon (possibly the coolest doctor ever) that neurogenic (did I spell that right?) bladders are consistently dirty bc they don't ever empty. But the urologist gave us a prescription to clear up this infection and another to take to prevent further infections until his circumcision next month (This will supposedly sure all of our problems. We'll see...) and told us we could be on our way the very next morning. They also found a bacteria in his bladder that is contagious and put him on contact isolation. Yay for yellow gowns and blue gloves for every foreigner who enters our room. This has happened to us the last 3 hospitalizations. What gives?

But with our new sickness mystery solved we passed our time wandering the hospital making new friends, sitting in the cat walk and watching the cars at the stop light, going to the library, and celebrating James David's 31st day of hospitalization (Yay for a whole month of his life in white-walled, disinfectant territory). The next day (now Tuesday) and we prepared for our departure. But it never came. Neurosurgery came in and checked on us and said Urology would come  by later and discharge us. By 13:30 I was getting impatient. After finally bugging the nurse enough (Poor Mary...) she found out that neuro forgot to tell uro that they were supposed to come by, and they were fighting over who should officially write our prescriptions. Uro finally gave in because it was obviously a urological problem. As I wait on our prescriptions at the Out-Patient Pharmacy I am told that the doctor forgot to write in the dosage for the antibiotic. I look it over and low and behold it was written by a neurosurgeon... (Really guys?) But the awesome pharmacist gets it handled in a jiffy, only to tell me that I will need prior authorization for that prescription and to have it filled at our hometown pharmacy... But regardless, after two virtually sleepless nights on a very uncomfortable, tacky blue plasticy, pull-out hospital chair we were finally on our way home :) We celebrated by chilling on the couch and watching Sesame Street all night.