Day 134

One of these days, it has to get better, right? Poor Holden... He's had a horrible night and morning so far. We still don't know if he's caught something viral, if he has a bacterial infection, or if this is all related to something else. Everything is so jumbled and confusing right now.

I think we've figured out the retching. (Maybe.) It seems like he's retching when he's trying to cough and it hurts him, so he holds back a little bit and it comes out as gagging? That's our guess right now, but who knows. We're still going to talk to the GI doctor today, but it may not even be a GI issue at all. Confused yet? Yeah.

He was running a high fever again yesterday, so they took more blood for cultures and did a DFA swab, which put us on isolation/contact precautions until the results come back. That means we get to wear paper gowns and masks around the clock. (It's more for the protection of the other kids in the hospital than him, and it's a huge pain in the rear for us and all of the nurses and doctors.)

His white blood cell count was up yesterday, as was his CRP, so we thought surely he had something viral. But today the counts are down, and our NP thinks something else is going on instead. Another mystery for the little man. It's so incredibly frustrating!!

He pretty much alternates sleeping, coughing and crying, with no alert periods in between. Whatever is going on in that little body of his, it's knocked him down. We started him on antibiotics yesterday, but we had to hold them this morning because the levels were high when they checked them earlier. That's probably due to him not peeing - again. His output has dropped off, and he's swollen again. His creatinine is up again this morning too, so we'll have to be careful with the diuretics.

He's back on the high flow oxygen since we couldn't keep his sats up on the regular canula. If he continues in this direction, he'll end up back on the Vapotherm. It's not the end of the world, but certainly not what we want.

I'm not really sure what we're going to do at this point. I'm waiting for the doctors to come around on their rounds, and hoping they have something brilliant up their sleeves. Until then, we're rocking our poor baby around the clock, watching, waiting, hoping and praying. We really appreciate your continued prayers - he still desperately needs them!