Last week was one of the scariest of my lives. We have been very fortunate with Hudson and his health. He rarely gets sick and has only had fever one time in his life. Last year, he came down with strep – thus the fever and (until now) the sickest he has been. (Sidenote: he had a low fever after getting the MMR shot, but after learning that 100.4 is now considered fever, it seems he didn’t have one).
Anyway, on Sunday he woke up from his nap with a slight fever – 101ish. I could tell by his eyes he didn’t feel well and he was pretty quiet and clingy. I gave him some motrin and got him to settle on the couch to watch a movie. After the motrin kicked in, he perked up a bit and even ate some. Trent left to go play soccer, while the kids and I finished up dinner. Suddenly, Hudson started shaking uncontrollably. Kind of like he had chills, but he couldn’t stop. So, I took him upstairs to put on pjs and get in bed to get warm. When we got up there, he started shaking more. He laid down and kept saying “I cold, mommy. I cold”. I checked his temperature again and it had shot up. Then he started getting very lethargic and had a hard time staying awake. That sealed it. I decided to take him to the ER, but the problem was I had Harper, I couldn’t get in touch with Trent and I couldn’t get in touch with my parents. Fortunately, I finally got my mom on the phone and they were close by. Big thanks to Doug and Holly for calling the soccer center Trent was at (I couldn’t remember the name in my panicked state) and pulling him off the field.
My mom got to my house and we left Harper with my dad and headed to the ER at the children’s hospital. Hudson was alert on the way there, but still very lethargic. At one point he threw up (pretty much his first time to ever do that either) and it didn’t even phase him. When we got to the ER there were a million people in the waiting room. A nurse spotted us, came over and asked us some questions and took Hudson back next. I am not going to lie – I was grateful (very), but that scared me even more. At this point his fever was 104. He threw up the tyelnol they gave him which required them to give it to him another way. They got us back to a room and there we waited. His fever came down 103 which was good.
We watched 3 movies while we waited (Cars, Nemo and cloudy with a chance of meatballs). Hudson slept off and on in my lap. He wouldn’t let us put the hospital gown on him at all. Finally, we saw a doctor (it is now around midnight). She tested him for flu and ran his bloodwork. Flu came back negative and his white blood cells came back normal. While this was good news, we still didn’t know what was wrong. She suspected it was a virus that had to run its course. I had them run an RSV test because I wanted to make sure we weren’t dealing with that because of Harper. It took another 2 hours, but it was negative as well. The doctor said that when the fever gets that high they want to try to figure out what they are dealing with…once they rule everything out they are no longer concerned with how high the fever gets. (Maybe so, but this mommy is concerned!).
She sent us home (it is now 3:30 a.m.). Hudson stayed awake the whole way home. Little guy woke up at 8 after only 4 hours sleep! I took him to our pediatrician that morning and he suspected a mild case of the flu (despite the negative flu test and the fact H got the shot). Harper was sent to my mom’s house until Hudson fever broke (and let me just say I missed her so so much. My heart ached).
The rest of the week entailed a lot of rest and trying to get as much fluid as I could in to Hudson – which wasn’t easy. His fever finally broke Wednesday night at 11 and by Saturday he was back to normal for the most part. Bless his heart, I hated seeing him feeling so awful. It was quite the scary week and it resulted in his birthday party being postponed (yes, his birthday was a month ago) but we are just grateful he feels better and that Harper didn’t catch it!!!
