Not again (WARNING: Long story ahead)

I see irony in the fact that in the mail Friday, we received a bill for AJ's last trip to the Emergency Room. As you may recall, he was vomiting badly for several days and we couldn't figure out why...

Cut to Friday night. I awoke at around 2:30am to the sound of AJ coughing. Only it wasn't a normal cough. I went to his room to find that he had thrown up all over himself and his bed. I woke Daddy up to change the bedding while I cleaned up AJ.

On Saturday morning, AJ woke up at his usual early time. We were scheduled to participate in a campaign walk for Congressman Mike McCaul. AJ decided that he was up for going. We drove to Cypress to meet the other walkers, but while we were in the parking lot, AJ said he needed to throw up again. Which he did - leaning over the curb to puke in the bushes. We brought him home and gave him a dose of promethazine (Phenergen) that he had left over from the last bug. That knocked him out for a few hours. At about 5:00pm he woke up and told me his tummy hurt and he needed to throw up again. Yippee! This time it was so violent that the poor baby even had it coming out of his nose...Another dose of Phenergen and pure exhaustion and he was out again.

He woke me up a couple of times during the night Saturday night to ask for a drink of water. At about 2:30am he woke me up to tell me his leg hurt. From the way he described it, I just thought that he had been lying on it wrong and it cramped or went to sleep. I told him to roll over and sleep on his other side.

Hubby and I were awakened at around 4:45am to AJ screaming in agony. We rushed into his room where he was crying and holding his leg. He wouldn't let anyone touch him; he just kept screaming and crying. We noticed that his right knee looked a little swollen. We thought that he had twisted it somehow. We gave him some Tylenol and he went back to sleep.

He limped into our room on Sunday morning. He seemed to be okay as long as he didn't put much weight on his leg. As long as he sat still, all was fine. When he moved, he screamed and cried out in pain. I wrapped his knee with an ACE bandage and we went off to church. We were going to watch him carefully and take him to his doctor on Monday morning.

When we got to church, a doctor friend came up to check on AJ. He felt AJ's knee (through the bandage) and told us to turn around and take AJ to the Urgent Care Clinic. He thinks AJ has an infection in his knee. Well, crap on a cracker....that's what we need...

We took him to the clinic. The doctor examined him and diagnosed AJ with Cellulitis. Apparently, most people carry about 3 different kinds of staph bacteria on their skin. If they get any kind of injury, there is the risk that some of that staph will get under the skin and cause an infection. The infection must be stopped before it spreads or gets into the bloodstream. AJ was put on a strong antibiotic and some pain medication. We were told to take him home and keep him still with his leg elevated for a day or two. AJ spent the rest of the day propped up on the bed watching movies.

Monday morning, AJ woke up with red spots all around his ankle. Throughout the course of the day, the red spots spread up his right leg and started on his left leg.

Tuesday morning, the red spots had gotten much worse and had spread even farther. So I took him to his pediatrician. She looked at the spots and determined that it was not a rash as I had suspected. She said it was pitichiae (pi tee kee i). She wrote up orders and sent us to the hospital lab to have a CBC and blood cultures done. AJ screamed bloody murder through the entire blood draw...it was VERY traumatic...

CBC came back completely normal, but we will have to wait until Friday for the blood culture results.

Tuesday night at 12:30am he vomited again.

Wednesday morning, we took him to school. The red spots seemed a little lighter. However, I got a phone call from the school at 2:45pm saying that he had already vomited twice. I left work and went to pick him up. He has taken this evening's dose of antibiotic along with food. He has had Motrin for the pain in his knee. He was also given a dose of Phenergen before bed.

Hopefully, he will sleep through the night with no incidents.

We will see what tomorrow holds...