Kate was in Kindergarten, she actually was in full time (we have part time here) because she qualified for needing her help in her reading. I believe this occurred in February, but I may be off. I do however have the year right. The twins were here and just over a year. I remember how stressed I felt about needing to be able to nurse them. With David's vomiting, he still depended heavily on nursing.
Anyhoo, Kate came home from school and she acted tired. I noticed her eye was red and thought, dang, she's getting pink eye. It was a Thursday so I was relieved we were going into the weekend so it wouldn't go interfere with school to much. I sent the tired girl to bed and she woke up two hours later feeling slightly warm to the touch and her eye was really red. She went right to bed and in the morning she looked like this.
Holy wow! That was NOT pink eye. She obviously had an infection and she was very warm to the touch. I called the doctor and was able to get her in right after lunch.
Unfortunately since it was Friday, she wasn't able to see her regular doctor. She saw the other doctor in the practice. He prescribed an oral dose of amoxicillin, that I had filled immediately and given Kate her first dose by 2:00 pm. Kate was so sleepy, she went right to bed and didn't wake up until just after 7:00pm. The swelling was twice as big and she obviously was extremely sick. Kent was able to get to the immediate care center before closing and she received a shot of antibiotics and was sent home.
Once again exhausted, she fell asleep for the night and by morning, this is what we saw.
The poor child was unable to open her eye it was so swollen. It looked so painful and Kate, bless her heart, she pitches a fit at every little bump or bruise but when the painful stuff hit, she handled it like a trooper.
Kent's dad came over to help Kent give her a blessing. To say he was worried when he saw her would be an extreme understatement. After she had some breakfast, I do believe we allowed her to eat ice cream that am, her daddy took her to the emergency room. It was extremely obvious that the infection was immune to the types of antibiotics she'd already received within twenty-four hours.
I do have to throw in that Ean had this same type of eye infection the previous year but his responded extremely well to really brood range type antibiotic. The rate of growth that Kate was experiencing scared the crap out of me.
I found it frustrating to be at home when my instinct screamed to be with my obviously sick little girl but with four other children, two of which were extremely needy infants, I sat impatiently waiting at home.
When I called for reports, Kent filled me in but it wasn't the same as being there. After a few hours, there was talk about putting in an IV line and allowing Kate to come home, returning twice a day for IV antibiotics. However this no longer became an option when Kate received a CAT scan and it was confirmed that the infection had spread into her actual eye socket. Extremely dangerous because of the chance of the infection traveling along the optic nerve into the brain, Kate's only option was to be admitted for observation and aggressive IV therapy.
Kent was kind enough to share that Kate was charming the pants off the nurses and anyone else that came in to work on her. Kent's dad generously offered to spend the night at the hospital to make sure someone was there to be an advocate for Kate. With all the other kiddo's we took him up on that. Kate was admitted to the largest pediatric room I'd ever seen. For some reason there was one room at the end of the whole, bigger then my kitchen, that's where Kate was.
I was able to sneak away from home for a bit as she was admitted. She was the most cheerful child on the floor. All giggles and smiles, thrilled that I brought her favorite movies up. Oh and the gifts she was getting. Great fun, great fun! Getting blood samples taken only spoiled her mood for five minutes or so. The IV line was in, all they had to do was hook it up, so that didn't phase her and the wrap on her line was pink! She loved that!
Of course how dangerous this infection could be was beyond her comprehension and we didn't want to scare her. Actually, we didn't want to scare Kent's parents either, we planned on keeping the details to ourselves. Kent's parents tend to really panic and I mean really really panic. Unfortunately one of my in laws neighbors was a nurse on the peds floor and she filled Kent's mom in on the danger of the infection traveling through the optic nerve to the brain.
*Shaking head*
As predicted, they panicked.
Kate received six doses of IV antibiotics in twenty-four hours. Amazingly enough once Kate started to respond, her healing was extremely fast. About eighteen hours after her admittance, Kate was able to open her eye. We were thrilled!
During her time there, she saw a steady stream of doctors, all for different things. She saw an optomologist in case there was any damage to her eye. She saw an oral surgeon in case there was a need to lance and drain the infection site. There was at least three other separate doctors but for the life of me, I can't remember why they were involved.
Kate was released after about twenty-six hours in the hospital. Here she is after another day's mending.
She ended taking oral antibiotics for another two weeks after being released to make sure the infection was taken care of. The optomologist following her case was amazed that she suffered no ill effects and we skipped the follow-up appointment with the oral surgeon. We could hear the cha-ching of money slipping out of our wallet straight to all the outreached medical branches that needed payment.
It could have been so much worse.
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