Tuesday, December 7, 2010

In Which Connor Has A Relapse

Well, that didn't go particularly well.

Remember how yesterday I said that I thought Connor was on the mend?  I apparently should have thought about my amazing jinxing powers before I said that, because it sure came back to haunt me today.  I finally woke him up this morning at 11:00 because I was afraid he'd sleep the day away.  What I think was actually happening is that he'd probably had at least one of those seizures where he's still breathing (and thus didn't set his apnea monitor off) and so he was postictal rather than reluctant to get up.  At any rate, he was up for about an hour and then had the first seizure of the day that I saw.

He fell asleep afterwards and was out cold for about three hours.  Then he woke up and within an hour he'd had three seizures.  At that point I finally thought to take his temperature.  It was 102.9 degrees.  He'd had a normal temperature for the second half of Sunday and all of Monday, so I'd stopped giving him the Tylenol midday yesterday, not even thinking about the possibility of him having a relapse.

I plugged him full of Tylenol and gave him an Ativan just to hold off the seizures until his fever had the chance to go down.  Currently he's running normal, but it looks like I'll just have to give him Tylenol every four hours around the clock until he's got this bug completely licked because the last thing I want him to do is go status at two in the morning.

The sudden temperature jump is troubling because I'm not sure if that means he's caught some other bug that we're now going to have to fight through, if this bug is particularly resilient and his body is having trouble fighting it, or if he's got something else going on like a UTI or an ear infection that he'll need antibiotics for.  At this point he's been sick for five days and he's had a grand total of sixteen seizures over that time period.  We've been trying to keep him out of the hospital if at all possible, but if the Tylenol and Ativan can't keep him in check we're going to end up back there.  The only reason we've stayed out thus far is that pretty much all of these seizures have been the still-breathing kind.  Sixteen non-breathing seizures would probably land us in the PICU pretty quickly. 

Oh, and also I feel really guilty that I didn't think to check his temperature earlier, before he'd had all those seizures today. 

At any rate, we'll see how tomorrow goes.  Connor didn't have any more seizures after the Ativan and Tylenol, and he actually woke up a little bit for Jeremy in the evening, though he was very shaky and obviously under the weather.  Depending on how things progress tomorrow, we'll see whether or not we land in the hospital again.

I hope he can beat this bug soon!

~Jess

2 comments:

leah said...

I saw the word "relapse" in the title and my heart sunk- I hope he licks this bug soon! I also hope he hasn't developed an opportunistic secondary infection (like strep or an ear infection). Poor little guy!

Julia said...

Oy, not what you needed. Like Leah, I panicked a little too. I'll be sending the strongest anti-infection and no-hospital thoughts I can muster your way.

 
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