A Trip to the Hospital

Despite Hazen's rough beginning, I think that he's been relatively healthy throughout his life. Sure, he gets a cold here and there, but hey, I'm his mom, and I literally have the worst immune system in the planet.

The last week in June, I noticed that Hazen had spiked a fever a few times. I would give him a dose of Tylenol, and it took care of it right away, so I didn't think much about it. Otherwise, he was acting totally normal. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, right around nap time, he started acting a little weird. I thought that he was just super tired, so we put him down, but when he woke up only an hour later SCREAMING, I knew it was time to take him to the Doctor. Jason took him over, and I noticed right as they were getting ready to leave that Hazen appeared to have a really stiff neck. I noted it, then sent them on their way. They came home from the hospital with a diagnosis of Strep and an abscess that was in the early stages on his lymph node. He was given a shot of Rocephin, and sent on his way, with the instructions to come back the following day.

We let him snuggle and watch TV for the remainder of the night, and then put him to bed a little earlier than normal. The lump on his lymph node was growing faster than I could believe though, which was a little concerning. He woke up about 2 hours later absolutely screaming again. We rushed into his room, and he could barely move his head at all. I tried to assess the movement of his head, and when we realized he couldn't move his neck at all, we decided that it would be better to be safe than sorry, and went to the ER for a Meningitis rule-out. The doctor decided not to do anything because Hazen had already had a shot of Rocephin that day, so we were given some liquid Lortab, and sent on our way.

The next day, instead of Hazen continuing to get better, he seemed to get worse. He didn't leave the couch all day long! Finally, at 4:50, I was able to get into his Dr. (We had gone to the after-hours clinic the night before, and I was happy to finally get Hazen in to someone who knows him.) Dr. Lauret took one look at him, and sent us right over to Utah Valley to be admitted for IV antibiotics and a CT scan. Hazen has terrible veins because of his days in the NICU, so it took a few pokes to get the IV started. He was a good sport, but the sounds of him screaming, "No more Pokeys, ok?? No more, Mommy!", was enough to break my heart! We finally got situated in his room, and turned on UP for him, which made him happy.

The next morning, Hazen needed a CT Scan, but he had to be sedated for it. The Pediatric sedation team at Utah Valley is seriously amazing! Hazen on Versed is pretty much my new favorite thing in the entire planet. He was hilarious, and the nurses couldn't stop talking about how cute and funny he was! The CT Scan showed that he had two relatively large abscesses on his lymph node, and it was decided that he needed to get in for surgery relatively quickly. I was eager for him to get the surgery as well, because they had him on NPO status, which meant that he was unable to eat. I invite anyone to try to explain the logic of not allowing a 2 year old to eat, to that 2 year old. Hazen was TICKED.

Hazen had his surgery, and it went relatively well, save the fact that they had a difficult time extubating him at the end of surgery. It's fun to have exciting things like that happen when you're at clinicals, but when it's your own baby that the doctors have close calls with- MAN, it changes your perspective.

The infection control specialist wanted Hazen to get a PICC line, but there was no one around that could place it. That made it a little difficult to get as many days as they would have LIKED for the IV antibiotics, but they thankfully discharged us with a peripheral IV, because they knew that Jason and I would know how to manage it.

Hazen is doing just fine now. We would prefer not to have him be sick again anytime soon, but he's such a trooper. I love that little boy!