On Sunday night August 12th, Sam got a high fever. It made me nervous because it came on suddenly and we could not console him. In the morning I called a nurse to basically find out how much Tylenol I could give him. She told me that I needed to take him in to see the doctor as soon as possible. On the way to the doctor's office I thought that it was kind of annoying that I had to see the doctor so he could tell me how much Tylenol to give him. The doctor started doing all these tests. The did a strep test - negative. They did a urine sample - negative. Then the doctor told me he would have to do a test where they had to take a sample of his spinal cord fluid. The nurse brought in a parental consent form. All of a sudden this little fever was getting scarier. Before the test the doctor said they might have to put him in the hospital, but it sort of sounded like there was still some hope. They took Sam to another room to do the procedure and then after being there for more than three hours (not just for that, but total) the doctor brought him back. He said that everything went well but that after watching him he decided that he needed to be hospitalized right away. So it was off to the hospital after dropping Hailey off with the Tippetts. (Thank heavens for the Tippetts!) So at the hospital it was more of the same torture for Sam and mom. Finally they took us to a room and the waiting game began. They hooked him up to an IV and started pumping antibiotics into him in case it was a bacterial infection. Basically all the tests were coming up negative which was good news. It meant that it was probably just a virus. The second day we were there Sam started to show that he was not getting enough oxygen while he was in a deep sleep. This confused the doctor and he decided to do more tests and an x-ray. All came back negative again. They didn't know what was wrong. On Wednesday night the nurse thought that she had weened him off of the oxygen so we thought we would be coming home. Right before the doctor came his oxygen levels started dropping again. Confused once more the doctor decided to do another test. This one was the worst. They were testing to see if he had reflux which may have been getting into his lungs. For the test they had to stick a tube down his nose into his esophagus and hook him up to more machines. This would not have been that bad except I was not supposed to hold him and limit contact. That was super hard because I could not even pick him up to feed him. The test started at 4 in the afternoon and was supposed to last for 10 hours. At 2 am the nursed told me that they were going to keep it in until 4. At 4:15 am Sam was hungry so the nurses told the people that were doing the test to come and take them out. That test came back negative also but the sent us home anyway with and oxygen tank and an alarm that he wears while he is sleeping. It is a pain but were are extremely glad to be home. It was definitely not a great week, but in the room next to ours there was a handicapped child. As I walked by one day I saw his mother holding him and rocking him. I wondered how many times they had been there and how many more times they would be there in the future. Suddenly I was very grateful that all the tests came back negative!
