Medical Mysteries

Ok, I have ton to update! For those of you that may not know, Jenna is in the PICU (pediatric intensive care unit) at Children's Hospital in Birmingham. It's such a LONG story of what all has happened since I posted about going to the ER Tues. night. It's way too much to type, but I will give you the somewhat short version. Be warned, though, it's still a long post....

Wed. morning Jenna was fine and seemed to be back to herself. But, as the day wore on, we could tell she was getting more & more tired. She fell asleep on the couch & when my mom woke her to see if she wanted to go lay on her bed, she was warm again, so my mom took her temp & it was 104. So we started alternating tylenol & motrin every few hours. Skip ahead a few hours....she started complaining of stomach pain Wed. evening. I ended up holding her in my lap & as time passed, she complained more & more of her stomach and got to the point where she was screaming & kicking her legs in pain. It was pretty obvious how much pain she was in, so my mom and I decided to head to Children's Hospital here in B'ham to see what was going on. Of course she fell asleep on the way, and when we got here, she said nothing hurt anymore. I won't even go into all that, but basically we were here until around 2:30 a.m. then headed back home with no more answers to anything. Let me mention real quick that we brought Trevin with us so that I could feed him as needed....poor kid!

Let me also mention as a side note that I never got to tell you that Camden was at the dr's office Monday for a sore throat....dr. said his tonsils were big, but didn't look too badly infected. I had to go have a chest & neck X-ray done to rule out pneumonia & check on an enlarged lymph node in his neck. He received an antibiotic shot at the office, then a prescription for antibiotics as well. By Tuesday he was back to himself, and is doing fine on his medication. So, back to Wednesday....when Mackenzie got home from school, she was real quiet, eventually I took her temp, she was running a 101 fever, so I gave her a dose of tylenol. She also mentioned her throat hurt, which for her almost always means she has strep! The tylenol kicked in & she felt much better.

So, back to Jenna....we got back home around 3:15 a.m., put her to bed, I fed Trevin, and mom and I headed to bed. A little before 6 a.m., my mom burst into my room letting me know that Jenna was having another episode. I ran into the hallway where my dad was holding her. She was pretty stiff, and was starting with the saliva coming out her mouth. At least this time I kinda knew what was going on, so Tom grabbed a shirt, and we drove ourselves to the hospital instead of waiting for an ambulance. It was so discouraging to me have this happen twice so close together!! This time, though, I kept asking Jenna on the way to the hospital if she could talk to me & tell me if something hurt, and she just shook her head "no". That kinda scared me that she knew what I was asking & it was like she couldn't talk to me!!

In the ER, she finally opened her mouth & talked to me. She was just real tired. But, they did pretty much the same stuff they had Tues. night when we were there, but also decided to do a CT scan. While we waited on those results, the mother in me kicked in & I started to formulate a plan on how to get Mackenzie to a clinic to get her checked for strep, get Trevin fed, and also be with Jenna! Just as I made phone calls to my mom to get everything arranged, the dr. came in & said they saw a small suspicious spot on her CT scan, so they wanted to transport her to Children's Hospital where they knew she would get the best care & figure out what was going on. So, I immediately called my mom back & said scrap the plan we had just made. I immediately made a new plan, which consisted of Tom going home & it would now be his job to get Mackenzie to a doctor. My mom was to get ready & get Trevin ready & meet me back at the hospital. She would ride in the ambulance with Jenna & I would follow behind with Trevin since I knew where I was going.

Let me mention before I forget that Mackenzie is now on antibiotics & doing better :)

So now forward to the ER at Children's yesterday morning. Things are a bit jumbled in my head because so much happened, but the basic info is that they ran a bunch of tests on her blood, did another CT scan, did X-rays of her chest again, & took a urine sample. Early on they discovered her calcium levels were very low. They also think she might have calcium deposits that they're seeing on her CT scan. There is also a possibility that she has an infection of some kind throughout her body. It could be in her blood (sepsis? I think is what the term was), or even possibly partially treated meningitis. Anyways, the low calcium was very concerning to them, so in an effort to start somewhere, they decided to start treatment to get her levels up. They started an IV of calcium & said she had to be monitored closely while on that. During this entire time, my mom was with me in her room w/Trevin so that again, I could feed him when needed. While Jenna was on the calcium drip, I ran her medical records to the pediatrician's office down the street (another story for another day!!!) and before I got back, I got a call from the ER doctor saying I needed to get back because they were concerned about some of the labs coming back. SO, I ran all the way from the parking garage to the ER. When I got there, they said they had taken her to get some more X-rays of her stomach to check for possible kidney stones. I think that those ended up being fine. But, they decided they wanted to do a spinal tap to check for infection, so I had to sign a release so they could do that. In the meantime, they decided that they wanted to admit her to the PICU until they could figure out what all was going on. Basically, they said a lot of the things they were seeing could be caused by the calcium being so low, but some of the stuff they saw (not exactly sure what) didn't really match up with a low calcium problem.

Ok, let me make another side note. My dad & Tom & our associate pastor from church were in the process of moving us out of our apartment yesterday, so as my mom & I were in B'ham at the ER, we had 3 guys in charge of moving us! No offense to any guys reading this, but you all probably know Tom, and the thought of him moving all our stuff out is pretty scary. I'll be lucky to find anything when I get to the new house! So this was in the back of my mind while all this at the hospital was going on.

Finally around 3 p.m. they got Jenna admitted into the PICU. They continued giving her calcium in her IV, and eventually wanted her to eat a bunch of tums!! They told her she could eat as many as she wanted! She's been in the PICU since then. She is doing well...her fever finally broke at some point because she's not hot today. Right now they are still working on the calcium problem. They're not giving her any more calcium through an IV, they're hoping to get her levels up the last little bit with food. Once they do that, they're still trying to figure out WHY her levels are so low. They think her para-thyroid (not sure on the spelling) gland is not functioning properly. Once they get that figured out they can look into whether she has an infection in her body. But they are giving her antibiotics through IV for 48 hours to see if that improves her bloodwork.

They are also waiting for a bed to open up in the special care unit & then she'll be moved out of the PICU into that. Basically it's a step down from PICU, but not into the "normal" wing yet. At least we're making progress.

One last side note about the seizures....they are thinking now that they may not have been febrile seizures, but rather something called Tetnies I think. I'm not good at all the medical jargon yet, but tetnies is where your muscles tense up & you would see more of a stiffening of a person's body from the muscles tensing & untensing. Hope that makes sense. But, I would tend to believe that more just because with both episodes, nobody ever saw her "seizing" per say. It definitely looked more like how they described the tetnies...she would stiffen & be unresponsive. Either way, it was completely scarey. But they did say low calcium could cause that.

Well, I've gotta run & get back up to be with Jenna. I can not use my cell phone in the PICU, so I have not been able to call many people. I will do my best to update on here when the PICU is closed to visitors. I think we're without internet at home, so using the computer here at the hospital is looking like my best option right now.

Keep praying for us! We're all doing OK and I have my moments where I break down, but I really am OK, and I've been good about asking for help when it's needed.