Hospitalized with Influenza B

Thank you for the good idea about the food coloring and magic turtle drink.  I may very well try that idea!  Apparently I jinxed myself after my last post.

Gage woke up Monday morning not wanting to go to school.  This is very unusual for him, as he loves school.  His  temperature was 100.6, so I decided to keep him home and lay low.  His low grade fever subsided and he acted a little better as the day went on.  Towards the evening, he was getting the chills and his low grade fever was creeping back.  By 11:30 that night, his temperature was at 102.4.  I gave him his first dose of Tylenol.  It seemed to help, because he slept well for about 4 hours.  He woke up that morning, with a temp of 102.4 again and threw up over a 100 ml of his feeds.  This won him a trip to the ER, with an afternoon admission to 3 West.

 On the LVAD, there is a very fine line of fluid balance.  He has walked this line well balanced for over a month.  Add a fever and an ugly inflenza virus and it throws all his labs and balance into chaos. Mind you, this is a strain of influenza that was not in this years flu vaccine, as we all got the vaccine.  His fevers kept spiking on and off yesterday.  When his fever is low, you can get him to drink.  When it is high, he does what anyone would want to do, sleep. The doctors have given him a lot of fluid to try and stay on top of the dehydration, but his VAD keeps having suction events.  This is where the top of the HeartWare , where the blood gets sucked into the device, presses against the septum of the heart and sucks part of the muscle wall over the top.  Gage has been asymptomatic to any of these events, it just lets the doctors know that he is on the dryer side of where he needs to be.  They also had blood pressure issues with him yesterday and last night.  They couldn't get his blood pressure to come down.  So, they gave him a bunch of blood pressure meds.  It seems to be better today.  Their not sure what made the blood pressure higher. Possibly a faulty cuff.

He will hopefully only have a couple more days here.  Just to get his fluid balanced where they want it and his labs back to a good number. His kidneys have taken a hit with this as well.  Just when we thought our schedule was crazy, throw one of our kids in the hospital and it makes a new definition of crazy.  Jason gets back on Sunday, we will definitely be ready for him to be here.  Thank you to my friends here in California for helping me out with the other kids.  What would I do without you Michelle and Sondra. We will start Lindsey and Sierra on Tamaflu today to make sure they don't get the same thing.  Let's hope it stops with Gage.

Above: Gage in his room 3241 watching a movie.  Below: Gage in the ER watching a movie.  Not minding the lying in bed and watching movies.