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This week I am attending a developer conference here in Orlando from Monday through Wednesday. Oh, and participating in an inline marathon at Disney on Sunday morning. So, kind of a busy week anyway. Of course it is the perfect week for things to go off the rails.
We didn't have Ben this weekend, and Kris and I spent a very nice and lazy weekend just hanging around the house. I finished getting my mom's bike put back together, and I also built a nifty four-tiered cedar plant holder for Kris. We picked up the counter top for my desk as well, plus a decent stud finder (save the jokes), but I didn't even put any effort into working on that project. The three supports are made, but still need to have the edge trim added to them and then be painted. I should be taking a week off in the next month or so, and I figure I will wrap up that project then.
So anyway, Sara called on Sunday afternoon to let me know that Ben was sick. He hadn't had any solid food since Saturday afternoon, he wasn't drinking any juice, and he was more or less living in the bathroom. No throwing up, but plenty of action at the other end so-to-speak. She was concerned that this was the beginning of another bout of pancreatitis, but I seriously doubted it was anything more than a common stomach flu or virus. In any case, Sara wound up taking Monday off from work to care for him and to call doctors.
Even though she started calling at 8am, it wasn't until after 3pm before she got any real response from the GI specialist. He doubted that it was anything related to pancreatitis, and suggested we take him to the ER to be checked out. In order to try to avoid an ER stay, Sara called Ben's pediatrician to get a second opinion (I would have made exactly the same choice). He wound up in seeing that doctor at about 5 in the evening, and I headed right to the doctor's office from the conference.
The doctor there again didn't think there was any indication of pancreatitis, but Sara was still pretty freaked out about that possibility. In any case, Ben was by that point severely dehydrated, and the doctor felt that it would be better to take Ben to the hospital to get blood work and an IV. By 6pm we were at Arnold Palmer Children's Hospital, and around 7pm we were triaged by the nurse. It then took another two hours before we were back in the actual ER in a room, and after midnight before a doctor was able to see him. Blood work was done, a stool sample was taken, and he was rehydrated with a saline solution in an IV drip. He started perking up about halfway through the IV, and even started drinking juice without prompting. The tests came back basically ok except for the dehydration and an elevated white blood count. Around 4am Ben was released, and I made it home to bed at about 5am.
And then got up at 7am to get back to the conference.
I am a wee bit tired today.
I got a message earlier from Sara saying Ben had slept for five hours, and then drank a full cup of juice when he woke up and started asking for food. Unfortunately, about two hours later I got another message that he barely ate any solid food, he hasn't had much more to drink, and he is back hitting the bathroom on a steady basis. She says he is still lethargic, and doesn't seem to be improving. She has calls out to the doctors, and that is the last I have heard. If he can keep hydrating himself we can probably avoid a trip back to the hospital, but I don't know how optimistic to be on that front. I don't expect to see much sleep in my near future.
But hey, the conference is good, I am learning lots of stuff, and I have scored seven t-shirts, a new backpack, plus various other bits of swag. Later today I'll get a free 1 gig thumb drive, which will replace the one the dog chewed up a while back. So that's nice.
We didn't have Ben this weekend, and Kris and I spent a very nice and lazy weekend just hanging around the house. I finished getting my mom's bike put back together, and I also built a nifty four-tiered cedar plant holder for Kris. We picked up the counter top for my desk as well, plus a decent stud finder (save the jokes), but I didn't even put any effort into working on that project. The three supports are made, but still need to have the edge trim added to them and then be painted. I should be taking a week off in the next month or so, and I figure I will wrap up that project then.
So anyway, Sara called on Sunday afternoon to let me know that Ben was sick. He hadn't had any solid food since Saturday afternoon, he wasn't drinking any juice, and he was more or less living in the bathroom. No throwing up, but plenty of action at the other end so-to-speak. She was concerned that this was the beginning of another bout of pancreatitis, but I seriously doubted it was anything more than a common stomach flu or virus. In any case, Sara wound up taking Monday off from work to care for him and to call doctors.
Even though she started calling at 8am, it wasn't until after 3pm before she got any real response from the GI specialist. He doubted that it was anything related to pancreatitis, and suggested we take him to the ER to be checked out. In order to try to avoid an ER stay, Sara called Ben's pediatrician to get a second opinion (I would have made exactly the same choice). He wound up in seeing that doctor at about 5 in the evening, and I headed right to the doctor's office from the conference.
The doctor there again didn't think there was any indication of pancreatitis, but Sara was still pretty freaked out about that possibility. In any case, Ben was by that point severely dehydrated, and the doctor felt that it would be better to take Ben to the hospital to get blood work and an IV. By 6pm we were at Arnold Palmer Children's Hospital, and around 7pm we were triaged by the nurse. It then took another two hours before we were back in the actual ER in a room, and after midnight before a doctor was able to see him. Blood work was done, a stool sample was taken, and he was rehydrated with a saline solution in an IV drip. He started perking up about halfway through the IV, and even started drinking juice without prompting. The tests came back basically ok except for the dehydration and an elevated white blood count. Around 4am Ben was released, and I made it home to bed at about 5am.
And then got up at 7am to get back to the conference.
I am a wee bit tired today.
I got a message earlier from Sara saying Ben had slept for five hours, and then drank a full cup of juice when he woke up and started asking for food. Unfortunately, about two hours later I got another message that he barely ate any solid food, he hasn't had much more to drink, and he is back hitting the bathroom on a steady basis. She says he is still lethargic, and doesn't seem to be improving. She has calls out to the doctors, and that is the last I have heard. If he can keep hydrating himself we can probably avoid a trip back to the hospital, but I don't know how optimistic to be on that front. I don't expect to see much sleep in my near future.
But hey, the conference is good, I am learning lots of stuff, and I have scored seven t-shirts, a new backpack, plus various other bits of swag. Later today I'll get a free 1 gig thumb drive, which will replace the one the dog chewed up a while back. So that's nice.