Zoya's First Hospital Stay

It's been a long couple weeks around here. Poor Zoya got sick almost two weeks ago with petechiae and vomitting. We kept her out of school for three days thinking it was a bug. She seemed to start to get better, and then worse, and back and forth. We thought maybe she had a UTI with some of the symptoms she was having but her test came back negative. A week after she got sick we noticed the petechiae was much worse and she had lost two pounds. If you're a mama of a precious one with DS, weight loss plus petechiae plus sick equals THE BIGGEST SCARE OF YOUR LIFE. Thursday morning we took her to the doctor and they ran some tests including another urinalysis. We waited in complete anxiety for 36 hours (after being told it would only take 2 hours for the bloodwork to come back). Seriously, people, I've never been so sick with worry in my life! Thankfully her CBC did not point to Leukemia. I cried with such relief, okay I sobbed. With the results of the bloodwork, they thought it was mono that was making her so sick. Right after we received that news, Zoya slept for 14 hours straight, woke up for a few hours to eat, then went back to sleep for 4 more hours. Mono made total sense, plus, hey we could TOTALLY rock Mono. Afterall, we'd spent 36 hours in agony worried sick that she may have Leukemia. Praise the Lord we're not walking down that path...so many emotions there for another post. We will follow up with a hematology appointment to check for blood disorders due to the way the petechiae presented itself (and has in the past with other minor illnesses). 

At the doctor on Thursday. Her poor little eyes just didn't look right :( 

By Friday night she was just not right :( 

And Saturday morning after sleeping 14 hours she looked as if she didn't sleep a wink :( 

Upon waking yesterday her fever had gone up to 104, she was collapsing in pain and grabbing her knee crying. She continued to complain of a belly ache and was going on her second day of hardly eating or drinking. Her limbs felt like they were on fire. She was just getting worse instead of better. We just felt like something was NOT right, even if she DID have mono. Zoya is rarely sick and bounces back pretty quickly when she is. After calling the on call doctor they suggested we take her to the emergency room. So off we went. 

AT the ER they said that her previous bloodwork did NOT point to a current infection of mono but it's possible she was exposed in the past. The initial bloodwork they did in the ER showed a pretty big jump in her WBC count since the day before and high bands and inflammatory markers which likely meant an infection somewhere. They decided to start her on IV antibiotics and wait for more lab results.  She was admitted and started on IV antibiotics and fluids. 30 minutes after the antibiotics went in she was much perkier...is that possible? I'm going to say YES since it was such a drastic change. At that point they had not even started the fluids yet. They're still waiting on some of the labs, but at this point are treating her for a UTI. Are we convinced that is the source of the infection? No, but, we do know the IV antibiotics are working. They decided to keep her again tonight to make sure she continues to trend in the right direction. So Shawn and I switched off and he is at the hospital with her tonight. 

Here she is after she finally fell asleep last night. We got up to her room around 11 and she fell asleep around midnight. I tell ya, hospitals are NOT a good place for people who need sleep HAHA! 

Zoya learned to yell "NO OWIES" to everyone who entered the room (and Shawn says she's still doing that). She tried to get people to promise they wouldn't give her an owie before she let them near. The sweetest part of all is that she repeated, no less than 30 times, "always safe with Mama" to reassure herself ! She also decided that the only way she'd listen to directions from the nurses and doctors was if we pretended to speak as if we were cookie monster, holding cookie monster up, as if HE were giving her the directions, then it was fine LOL. Hey whatever works, right? :)

Here she was this morning. She's still not quite herself, but starting to cause some trouble, so we are really hoping that means she's on the mend! 

I tried to take pictures over the past couple of days (although bad cell phone pictures haha) with intent to make her a picture story. Zoya tends to have a lot of anxiety around doctors, and I don't blame her. She actually did REALLY awesome and was so brave this time around! But anyways, my plan is to make her a little story about what happened to help ease her anxiety about what she went through and hoping that if she should ever end up in the hospital again it won't seem as scary. 

Thanks for your prayers as Zoya continues to recover. So tough seeing my girl so sick, but I believe she's doing MUCH better now and hope it will continue! We are counting our blessings because we know the alternative diagnoses would have been much worse! Perspective is a beautiful thing. God uses times of trial to bring us to deeper understandings and for that I'm thankful!