Summer Recap: Hailey's Hospitalization

{DISCLAIMER: There may be photos or descriptions that are a bit graphic, so if you are squeamish, you might want to just skip over this post! This is also a very long post :)}

If you couldn't figure out in my last post's pictures, Hailey was not feeling well. She was trying her best to have fun, but you could just tell she was miserable. All she wanted to do was sleep on the couch. She had a fever off and on, and she wouldn't eat anything. Here is her story of what happened.

We decided to potty train Hailey near the beginning of June. I knew she was ready, so I just put panties on her one day and we never looked back since. Very shortly after we put new panties on her, though, I started noticing some pimply bumps on her bottom. I didn't think much about them because I had seen bumps like those on her bottom before and they went away just fine.

On Monday, June 9, Hailey's babysitter mentioned to me that Hailey was not acting her normal self. She seemed to get upset over the tiniest things and was crying a lot. On Tuesday, she wouldn't leave the couch and had a bit of a fever. Liz also mentioned that Hailey was not acting herself. On Wednesday, I opted to stay home with her and take her to the doctor's. But that morning, her fever was gone and she seemed to have more energy. Maybe she was OK and maybe I didn't need to take her to the doctor after all.

So that day, we decided to go swimming. Hailey had a fun time, but when we got her into her carseat, she was just crying and crying in pain. I started to think that maybe her bum was bothering her more than we thought. That night, Hailey was standing on one of the kitchen chairs. She took a step and lost her balance, making her fall off and bump the other chair. She was hysterical with pain and started asking to go to the bathroom. I thought she was being a little dramatic, but I took her into the bathroom helped pull down her underwear. Inside, her panties were covered in blood and puss. I looked at her bum and saw that her fall had caused one of the "pimples" to burst. There was much more inside and I squeezed out as much as I could, but Hailey was in so much pain that I just had to stop. I knew then that she needed to see the doctor.

Thursday morning, I took Hailey to the dr's office. I was a bit disappointed with the visit and the only reason I felt the only thing that was worthwhile from the visit was a prescription for antibiotics. I told the doctor that I had tested positive for MRSA a couple months earlier, but he didn't bother to swab Hailey. He didn't even lift the bandaid to see what the actual sore/boil looked like. He just said it very obviously looked like staph and here's your prescription. I wasn't very happy, but oh well. We had our medicine.

The pharmacist said to make sure she takes it with food. The only problem was, Hailey wasn't eating! We gave her some fruit snacks because we figured she'd at least want those, but when we gave her the medicine, she threw everything up and refused to take any more medicine (Tylenol included) or food. I was upset and stressed and worried that this infection would get worse because she couldn't keep her antibiotics down.

Friday morning, I still had to go to work. The sitter still took her and to my surprise, even said she got Hailey to eat her breakfast and take the medicine! (Come to find out later, they had to use two people and really force her to take it). When I went to pick Hailey up, she wasn't eating again and only wanted to be held. Which of course made it difficult because you also couldn't touch her bum. Try holding a child without touching their bum!

Saturday morning, like I mentioned earlier, I decided to sacrifice going to see the hot air balloons because Hailey needed her sleep. She still wasn't eating, though. I figured she would at least drink juice, so I tried to slip some medicine in her juice. She must have known, because she barely touched her juice either. We were unable to both feed or medicate her and despite trying to have fun, she was just miserable. At the parade, she fell down backwards and just cried and cried from the pain.

Sunday morning, I didn't feel well and Hailey didn't feel well, so we stayed home from church. Scott helped her to the bathroom and I took one look at her bum and said, "That's it. We're taking her to the ER." It was so big and dark, it almost looked like a dark bruise. I knew there was a lot underneath the skin that needed drained and I would not do that at home. I also knew she needed antibiotics and since we couldn't give them orally, she was going to have to get them intravenously. Plus, we were going to hit and exceed our deductible anyway with Leo being born, so I don't care if we take her to the hospital. So we called my parents to meet us there, and off we went!

I am so grateful for our decision to take her to the hospital. They wanted a surgeon to look at her bum and they suggested they admit her overnight to get her started on IV-antibiotics. It was a hard decision at first, but I am glad we chose to stay. The hospitalist sent a picture to the pediatric surgeon. A short while later, he came back and said the surgeon took one look at the picture and was coming down that night to do the surgery! My baby was going to have surgery!

Dr Cook was an excellent surgeon and he removed 30ml (that's equivalent to 1 fl oz) of puss from her abscess. If you think about a child's little butt cheek, that's a heck of a lot of fluid!! He packed the wound and said they'd keep her at the hospital for a couple nights while they wait for the cultures and make sure she is getting antibiotics. Surprisingly, they said these types of abscesses are pretty common in kids Hailey's age. Hailey's just happened to be a pretty big one!

Hailey slept that night and had her wound repacked in the morning. Sedation is a funny thing on a 2 year old!

But boy was she just night and day different from last night! She was happy again! She only cried when they had to change her diaper because of the wound on her bum (and she wasn't happy about being back in diapers to begin with). But every time something hurt her, we'd just say "Bye bye, owies! Doctors nice! Nurses nice!" and that really seemed to help her out.

Hailey ended up staying at the hospital until Wednesday after they found out she had MRSA and made sure she was on the right antibiotics and that she would tolerate taking oral antibiotics at home. Which Scott had to force her to do it once and then we never had a problem again.

We joked that it would have been really convenient if I went into labor while Hailey was in the hospital because all I'd have to do would be to go up just one floor. In reality though, we were grateful that I didn't. Scott didn't need his wife and his daughter in the hospital at the same time.

This hospital experience was fun and good, and I was grateful it turned out to be so positive. But boy will this little girl end up costing us! First the NICU, now this. I'm not looking forward to what else she has in store for us!

Summer Recap: Art City Days and Summerfest

June 14 was a big day and I was looking forward to it for a long time. Since I knew I was going to be having a baby pretty close to the 4th of July (probably my favorite holiday after Halloween), and would thus miss out on the festivities around then, I had to make sure I was going to get some sort of parade/summertime fair fun! I even meticulously planned my weekend out to ensure that this would happen: Art City Days Fair Friday night, bake muffins, wake up early Saturday morning to watch the Hot Air Balloons and snuggle in blankets and eat muffins, then watch Art City Days Parade at 10:00am, then go up to Orem to finish out the evening at Summerfest and watch the parade and fireworks there. I just love parades and fair food and the whole atmosphere of fairs and crowds. I was so excited!

However, things didn't really go as planned. Hailey started getting sick earlier that week. She lost her energy and her appetite. All she wanted to do was sleep on the couch. Poor girl was miserable and wouldn't/couldn't even take her medicines.

We were able to make it out to the fair Friday night and have dinner. She decided she was well enough to play in the splash pad a little bit, so we let her do that. Saturday morning, I knew I needed to let her rest rather than try to wake her up for balloons. So I sacrificed the balloons that I was so looking forward to. Then my mom and Heather came down and we sat at the end of my street and all watched the parade together. It was fun, but you could tell Hailey really wasn't feeling well.

Scott went to work and we went up to Orem. We set up at our spot for the parade and got food for dinner. It was so much fun and I was so glad that I got to hang out with my family celebrating a tradition we have had every year since we were kids! And even Hailey, despite feeling awful, had fun too and even ate a lot of chicken!

 

 

After the parade was fireworks! We hauled all our stuff over to the baseball fields and set up camp and just hung out. It was a lot of fun! Scott was even able to join up with us!

She LOVES bubble gum and always makes this face when my mom blows bubbles!

Me and Oy. Yes, these are all phone pics. :)

So despite being 36 weeks pregnant and very swollen, I had a very enjoyable weekend and was able to enjoy one of my favorite summertime pastimes before I had the baby.

I'm Still Here!

It's been a busy summer! I know you all are so eager to hear about our fun adventures! Here's a teaser. :)