Time Out for Chase

I woke up yesterday at 5 am to Chase crying that he was really hot. I felt his forehead and was surprised to find him burning up. I tucked him into my bed and took his temperature. 103. I figured somebody had passed the flu we had last week back to him. I sighed and we went back to sleep.

A few hours later Chase was crying again and doubled over in pain telling me that his belly was really hurting. I called the doctors office to try and schedule him an appointment, but found that they didn't open until 9, and as it was barely 8, I decided to jump in the shower and get a head start on the day. When I got out, Chase was really hurting. I started to kind of freak out. Chase is the least dramatic of anybody in the family and the wya he was acting was telling me to really take it seriously. I grabbed the first clothes I saw (being messy and tossing your clothes onto the floor instead of in the hamper, or dresser can be a blessing!), and threw them on, tossed a brush in my purse and carried Chase out to the car. I ran back in to literally pull a sleeping Ava out of bed and buckle her up too. We drove straight to the hospital. I carried Chase in with a sleepy Ava in flip flops and pj's tagging along behind me. I still hadn't even brushed my wet hair.

The nurses were very kind and immediately started to asses the situation. The most urgent concern was the pain in his side. A million tests were ordered and an IV was started. Chase didn't even flinch. He's so good that way. The doctor pushed and pressed and prodded Chase until he was stumped, the pain seemed to have no consistencies for a diagnosis. A kidney stone? No, urine cultures were normal. Appendicitis? Possibly, but the classic symptoms are not there. Still with a high fever and severe pain, they decided to pursue it. A CT scan was ordered. The IV that was started would not do for the dye that had to be pumped into his system, and after prodding and bumping and pulling on the first one, (ouch!) they finally gave up and started a second one in the other arm! Chase was in alot of pain, now in both arms and never said a word. He is such a trooper! He is the most private of all my children and I can only imagine his further mortification when he was first informed by, and then violated by the nurse, who had to rectally administer more dye that makes your organs show up on a cat scan. Chase's eyes were as big as quarters as he stared at me, bewildered. Still, no tears. He is my hero! The nurse who performed the scan said he was her youngest patient was probably her best as well.

After all of that, the scan came back normal and appendicitis was ruled out. However, an incidental finding on the scan is what sent everybody into serious concern. Several cyst-like masses were found in the lower portion of each of Chase's lungs. The now concerned doctor, ordered a chest x-ray. If the masses showed up there too, it was likely that Chase had an abnormal type of pneumonia. BUT, the chest x-ray came back completely normal. The increasingly concerned doctor, still stumped because none of it added up, decided to order another blood test that would tell us if Chase's white blood cell count was high. If it was high that would tell us that his body was definately sick, even if it didn't tell us what it was sick with. The normal white blood cell count for a child Chase's age is 15. Chase's came back at 29! Something was definately wrong.

The doctor, being a PA and the only one there at the time started making phone calls to get some advice. The pain in Chase's side had suddenly subsided and was virtually gone before pain medication was even administered. The high fever, spiking again at 103, and high white cell count and now unidentified masses on his lungs were a high concern of his, because he was starting to wonder if they were all connected. He told me that he definatley wanted to follow up with the lungs because whenever something like that shows up, you need to immdiately rule out cancer. CANCER? I started to really freak out inside. I was giving him the un-huh, un-huh glazed over-stare. Up until this point I had been doing ok on my own , but now I wanted Bruce to be there. Unfortunately for me, he left 2 days ago to race a yacht in the Newport to Ensenada race. I had been keeping him updated with text meassages, but now I felt like I was going to fall over and I wished for him to be there to catch me. But he couldn't be, so I settled for the next best thing (not always next best and often first choice). I had been staving off calling anyone until I knew what was going to happen, but it was finally too much and diagnosis or not I wanted my Mom. After a good chat, I was feeling better and went back to Chase's room where the doctor was waiting with information. He had called and consulted a doctor at Primary Children's, and was encouraging me to take Chase to them. He was confident in their resources and staff and felt like it was necessary to find out what the masses were immediately.

So, I left the hospital for just long enough to go home and throw myself together, (my wet hair was long since dry) put some socks on under my shoes, pick up kids and get them to Gramma's house (Thanks Mom!) and grab a few essentials for Chase who had been asking when it would be ok to put his clothes back on. (Poor kid wanted his undies back on and I don't blame him!) Then we headed out and made the 2.5 hour drive to Primary's.

Talk about a long day! It took another 4 hours for Primary Children's to get on the same page that Bear River Valley Hospital was on. They had to review the labs, review the scans, perform their own tests and make their own assumptions. The CT scan was read by 4 different doctors or radiologists and finally a diagnosis was decided upon. The pain in the side was less of a concern because all the major things had been ruled out, and the pain had since gone away. But the official diagnosis for the lungs was Pneumonia. Pneumonia would explain the high white count, the high fevers, and according more than less of the doctors, the strange CT scan. They decided that pumping Chase full of antibiotics that would kill a viral pnuemonia and a bacterial pneumonia was the best thing to do. So, 12 hours and 2 hospitals later, they finally let Chase, who had not been able to eat or drink since the night before, have something to drink and they let us go home!!! I told him he could have anything he wanted to eat or drink and the only thing he wanted, was FUNYONS! What a sweet kid! He endured the peeling off of IV tape, for the third time, (serious ouch!) which was the most painful (BUTT, not the most uncomfortable! (no pun intended!)) of all he had endured, and he was free! I found the closest gas station and was never so happy to purchase Funyons and blue gatorade!! The drive home was long, but I was so relieved and grateful to be in my own driveway with all of my kids in tow!! I am humble today and thank Heavenly Father for keeping Chase healthy, if not under the weather!

So, we went in with a possible appendicits and left with a diagnosis of pneumonia. We will need to follow-up with our regular doctoe next week to make sure that the masses on/in his lungs really have gone away. But for now, I'll take it! It's a bittersweet diagnosis, bitter because Chase is sick, but sweet because they can fix what he is sick with!! Get better Chase!!! =D