What's going on with Zoë...
“Does she feel warm?”
We were in Richmond visiting family and I asked both Kyle and my sister in law (also has 3 kids) to do a forhead check for Zoë. Her body seemed a little warm to me, but then again she was really wrapped up. I took her axillary temp and it was .1 degree from 99. She had been fighting a cold for about a week, and I was worried she had developed a complication. Additionally she had been unusually sleepy that day and the day before (which I attributed to her cold). I figured she was just snuggled a little to tightly and loosened her jammies. The next day she slept the entire day—I had to wake her up for meals. Mid day she felt warm again so I checked her armpit temp again. Yikes! 101.6! I checked it 5 more times before we bundled up for the emergency room (it was nearly in the single digits that day already at 3:00). I grabbed her diaper bag, an extra blanket, and kissed the kids and my husband goodbye and we were off
We checked in and they took her vitals. They didn’t comment, but they saw Zoë right away! RSV-negative, Flu-negative, Pneumonia-negative. Thank you God, I thought, but at this point something happened that will forever go down in my mommy guilt history... I actually tried to convince the ER Physician to skip the catheter and UTI check. After all, I felt awful about a year and a half ago when they stuck a catheter in my baby Mikah as she screamed and cried and bled—all for no reason, as she ended up with ultimately unnecessary antibiotics that made the tummy bug worse that night. I asked him if we could just skip that test and wait to see if her fever had gone down. After all, she did have a little cold—the temp they took was slightly lower, maybe I just had bundled her to tightly? I am so very thankful that the on-call doctor, Dr Harvey, who could have easily followed my wishes, given my reasons, insisted on a urine analysis. As we were waiting for that to happen, I recalled in the back of my mind that her diapers had been having a strong, almost chemical smell for a while. I attributed it to something else and had not really thought about it until then. The more I thought about it the more I had the feeling that this test was going to come back positive. They got the catheter in and I immediately saw that something was very, very wrong—her urine was so cloudy you couldn’t even see through it.
They admitted her right away for 48-72 hrs of IV antibiotics. She had a UTI that had infected her kidneys and hopefully not her blood. The next 4 hours were a whirlwind of activity. I felt like my head was spinning—nobody could tell me how far this had gone because no one knew—we just had to wait for all the tests to come back. Weirdly the thought that put me over the edge was that we were going to be apart for her first New Year’s eve. That first night was the hardest as they tried to find a vein in my poor dehydrated baby for an hour and a half while she screamed, then we settled into the room we’d spend the next 5 days in, as I tried to absorb all of the information coming in while simultaneously trying to inform friends and family, as well as cancel things in my schedule for the next couple days.
The wonderful news is that after the first round of antibiotics, Zoë was fever free, and the fever never returned! I attribute that to the wonderful care she received at WMC and the prayers from warriors across the country pouring in from friends and family—her kidneys are completely recovered with no scarring or abnormalities, and her fever never returned!
She did have one complication however that landed her in the hospital for an additional few days, though. Zoë has always had trouble gaining weight—It’s not so much that she’s little, it’s more so that she is not creating her own curve—she dropped from a healthy 20th Percentile to under the 1st in just few weeks. Being sick cost her so much weight (additionally she was dehydrated again) that she wasn’t allowed to leave right away, so we hung out there indefinitely until we could get enough calories in her and make sure she was able to maintain growth. She spent her time charming EVERYONE that she met—I’m pretty sure she got extra nurse visits just for being cute!
After lots of hours and tears and worry and creativity as we all tried to get little Zoë well, I was nearly a shell of a human with so little sleep. We had quite a few visitors that came and loved on her (and me) and held her and prayed for her, and even more who called to do the same—like battery chargers! I am forever grateful for that. On the last day, a day before we would have to try a more invasive method of getting her weight up, She tipped the scales enough to leave (YAY!). She has since lost some of that new weight, unfortunately—although I suspected this, but she hasn’t lost any more weight! So, that is where we are now, working with her Pediatrician and other specialists trying frantically to play catch-up. But I’ll tell you what, I thought Mikah was my little firecracker, but now I’m not so sure! This little one has a fire in her that I cannot explain—and even though I worry a little everyday for this tiny little girl, I have nothing that faith that she is going to be just fine, even if she’s not a very big person, she will have a BIG heart and a BIG personality, and one day (already!), and she will no doubt do BIG things!
