Fun with E.Coli

Two weeks ago, I was down and out because of some nasty flu that rendered me practically useless. I felt slightly better on Wednesday (the 17th), which was Nehemiah's 100th day of life, so we went over to Igloo to take some photos. I'll have those up eventually. I want to edit them before posting. The bug still hasn't completely cleared up, but all is well.

That weekend, we noticed Nehemiah was running a pretty high fever. He was acting out of character, so I felt his head and took his temperature. When it read close to 39ºC, I immediately said to Hee Suk, "Honey, open the window right away." This was Saturday, if I am not mistaken. On Sunday, he was still feverish, so I started giving him some baby Tylenol. We went out that night with my brother-in-law's family to have dinner to celebrate his 100 Days, and he did just fine.

His fever was much better on Monday but still not gone. With him still a little out of character, we decided to head to the doctor. When we left, it looked like just a simple fever, so instead of waiting around for the urinalysis results, I went home and Hee Suk dashed off to an appointment. When some phone number I didn't recognize called me on my phone several times, I finally answered. It turned out that an over-abundance of something or other was in his urine, showing that he had a urinary tract infection. My jaw pretty much hit the ground. I didn't even know it was possible for babies to catch them. His doctor wanted to admit him and told me to talk it over with my husband.

After Hee Suk finished his appointment, he went back to the hospital to talk to the doctor and wound up getting him to just give us a prescription. With me questioning the prescription and Hee Suk's overall concern, we decided it would be best to just get him admitted to the hospital and cared for there since it's how they handle it best.

We were admitted Monday night, and I think I cried more than Nehemiah. I wanted to be with him while they inserted the IV, but the nurses felt it would be better if I weren't there. They instead called me right after they got it in and were wrapping it up. They did it so quickly that I had to compose myself in a flash to follow the nurse who came to get us. He didn't even shed a tear! He was just very loudly complaining. He is his father's son for sure.

We were there from Monday night until Thursday morning, and it was pretty uneventful. He was almost too thoroughly examined, but it was definitely a good thing to know we caught the infection early so that no damage occurred to his kidneys.

There was a mother there with her 6-month old son in our same room, and we felt so bad for her. She had been to Severance Hospital because her son's fever was even higher than Nehemiah's, and they sent her home with just some fever medication. When the fever didn't go away, she went to another small hospital where they were able to diagnose him with a UTI and refer her to our hospital for care. He is probably still at the hospital, as his urine was backing up into his system. She hardly got a wink of sleep because her son was just crying all of the time. For some reason, the nurses weren't able to get the IV into his foot like they did for Nehemiah, so he had to have it in his arm/hand (I'm not sure which.)

As briefly mentioned above, we stayed in a non-private room. I'm actually thankful no private rooms were available, as it wasn't that bad. We started out with four people, then one family left the next day, so we were down to three. Another family came later, though, and a fifth family came on Wednesday who wound up right next to us. (Everything is sectioned off by curtains, of course.) It was fine until that fifth family got there. The mother was very...strange. She seemed to be Korean and spoke Korean most of the time, but she read stories to her daughter in English and randomly spoke to herself in some language that sounded similar to Russian but didn't seem like Russian (unless hers is just that bad).

That woman would not get off of her phone doing whatever business she had to do. She wore a hospital gown, even though it was her daughter who was admitted. And her English. Oh, her English. She is referred to by us as the witch from Snow White, and it was Hee Suk who came up with the nickname! She sounded positively evil, as if with every sentence, she was offering her daughter a poison apple. Hilarious stuff. We could not stop mocking her and still do on occassion.

Her daughter is definitely her little princess, though. On Wednesday night, Hee Suk was entertaining Nehemiah with a monkey toy that has three thick plastic keys attached that his grandmother bought for him. It is not noisy in the least. Even with the keys clicking together, the sound is quite muted because they are thick. We put up with her witch-voice, and incessant phone chatter and her daughter's whininess all day, but she just couldn't have us playing with the monkey because her princess was in a coma from the poison apple, I mean, sleeping. I was not there when this happened, and it's probably a good thing I wasn't.

Anyway, I am derailing my train of thoughts. In the end, Nehemiah's case was mild because we caught it so early, so we were able to leave on Thursday morning with a prescription for some antibiotics. The cause of his UTI was E.Coli. I said to the doctor, "How? Isn't that from raw chicken and the likes?" "Yes, but it is also very common in, well, poo poo." I almost died trying to contain my laughter. He didn't say poop: it was "poo poo."

I was very concerned about the antibiotic and braced myself when we gave it to him the first time, but he pretty much enjoys it. We call it his orange juice. He needs to take it twice a day, so that is very manageable.

At any rate, this is getting choppy because he is getting fussy. I hope to get my act together to finish editing the photos soon.

Definitely giving thanks and praise to God for keeping our little guy safe and sound!