A very scary night

Well I am back and with one doozy of a story. Last week I had mentioned that I was sick. I actually ended up in the urgent care on Thursday afternoon because I felt like I was breathing through a straw. It turns out I had a bad case of Bronchitis so it was easily fixable. The bad thing is Jude got it and with Jude things are never simple. Jude can go from simply fighting a cold to very sick in a matter of hours. Friday afternoon he would cry with the nurse for no reason, which was our first indication that something was wrong. By Saturday Jude wasn't smiling, but didn't seem to lethargic. By Sunday he had labored breathing at night and we knew he needed to go see a doctor on Monday.  We weren't able to fit him into the doctor so we came up with a plan and here is how our Monday played out.

We decided to take him up to an ER near our house after work. If we drove him to Cooks it would take hours trying to get there in rush hour traffic. Jude would be miserable by the time we got there. I figured the local ER could take an Xray of his lungs to see if he had any developing pneumonia. If he did have an infection they could prescribe an antibiotic and send us on our way. BAD move on our part on going to the local ER. They were WONDERFUL, but we should have gone to a speciality center. So they evaluated Jude and decided to give him an IV of fluid. Jude began to perk up some and the doctor explained that his labored breathing can make him lose fluids so he was a bit dehydrated. They then did the chest X ray and they wanted to check his blood. After awhile Mike took Emily to go get some food while I stayed back to watch Jude. That's when the doctor came in with his news. He said that the X ray showed something developing on the left lung. He said he wouldn't call it raging pneumonia but it was concerning. He then started talking about acid in the blood and said he was hanging a bag of antibiotics and we were being transported to Cooks........what ? wait? That's not the plan! So I talked with the nurse and explained that if this is a simple lung infection we would prefer to take Jude home and see his doctor in the morning. He had fluids and antibiotics and I was convinced he would be alright. She went and retrieved the doctor who said " I don't think you understand how serious this is. Jude has high levels of acid in his blood on two different tests which indicate a possible life threatening blood infection. Since there are two tests confirming this I believe that's the issue and so does the doctor at Cooks". I just sat there with my mouth open and excused myself to call Mike. I delivered the news to him and then text all my friends and family to pray. We waited on our transport and we were all eerily calm and quiet. Mike and I both knew that if Jude really had a blood infection......it was highly likely it would be fatal. I rode in the Ambulance with Jude while Mike and Emily followed in the truck.

Once we got to Cook's we waited and waited and waited. I finally got very irritated and called a nurse into our ER room. I asked "if this is life threatening then why are we waiting". The nurse was wonderful and said he would get someone on the case right away. I looked at Mike and said, "I pray this is all a mistake and we can take him home". Soon the doctor came in and examined Jude. She said she did see Jude's white blood cell count is a bit elevated, but she isn't worried about the acid like the other doctor. She said she wanted to re-test because she believes the test could have been contaminated because the blood must be free flowing blood from the IV. We confirmed that the ER had a difficult time getting his blood out of the IV. So she re-tested and THANK THE LORD it was normal!!! So she confirmed Jude probably had the beginnings of pneumonia and wrote us a prescription and sent us on our way. When she confirmed it was a mistake Mike just grabbed me and hugged me tight. He said "we were coming back to the same place where they told us he wouldn't make it past five". I told him I thought the same thing. We were both very relieved.

So after a round of antibiotics via IV and fluids I looked at Jude and he cracked a smile. I felt so much better. At 1am I was eating some spaghetti because I was starving and then fell into bed. Jude came home with Bugs Bunny scrubs and went sound asleep in them in his cozy bed.