Lindsey is VERY SICK

The last 6 days have been horrible and I still don't know where the end of it is. Lindsey came down with a fever late last Thursday night / early Friday morning 8/1. I was "hoping" it was nothing, but it was still very high on Friday morning so I took her to the doctor thinking it was probably an ear infection since she never complains of any pain when she has them. No ear infections, but when they examined her mouth, there they were. I felt pretty dumb for not having seen them myself, but they must have popped up over night. There were two horrible blisters on her tongue, which quickly gave us the correct diagnosis of the virus, hand foot and mouth disease. Not a fun thing to have, but it usually runs its course and life goes on or so I thought - aaahhhh! Instead of getting better after about 5 days, it was still getting worse. I am writing this early Thursday morning and it has been 6 days since Lindsey has eaten, except for 1 piece of cheese and a piece of turkey last Friday evening. She has been able to drink enough fluids to not become dehydrated, but it has not been easy for her. She will cry for apple juice and then chuck the sippy cup when I hand it to her and start crying, grabbing her mouth and saying hurt, hurt. It is horrible to see her go through this. It makes my heart break. I was dealing with all of it, so so, with help from a Great Daddy that Lindsey has and my parents, but it all melted on Tuesday night. She became inconsolable, crying constantly, and in horrifying pain. We hurried to Children's Hospital and arrived a little before midnight. After taking her, waiting, and all the drama of the ordeal they concluded that she was not dehydrated and that there was no iv medicines to help with her pain. So, they said there was nothing they could do for her that I didn't already have, which was the Tylenol Codeine that the doctor had called in for her on Sunday. But, she won't take the oral meds and I was ready to scream - thinking they were going to send her home and having done nothing to help relieve her pain. After having seen 1 nurse, 1 resident doctor, 1 doctor and no help another nurse came in to try and give her the oral med. She was definitely a more experienced nurse (19 years to be exact) and saw how horrible of pain she was in and that it was going to be a futile attempt to give her the meds. She went ahead and tried at the doctors request, but blood, medicine and saliva started flying everywhere, with the blisters being so horrible in her mouth. Her mouth is completely full of them, including her cheeks, tongue, lips and probably her throat as well as about 8 sores on the outside of her mouth. She looks absolutely horrible and completely miserable. She will not swallow so I have tried to keep a bib on her to keep her shirt and chest from being completely soaked. After the futile attempt of giving her orals the doctor finally agreed to give her some morphine by iv and while they were at it to give her some fluids by iv as well. She also had a temp of 104 and then it dropped to 101.8 after we were there for a while. They started the iv around 2:30 a.m. or so. It definitely helped calm and relax her so she was not writhing in pain and crying constantly. The sad part is there is no medicine to help make it get better. By the time we were discharged around 5 a.m. she was already crying in pain again, but not quite as bad. Since her hospital visit she has still been bad, but never getting as bad as she was prior to going to the hospital. Hopefully we are on the upswing of things and daylight is peaking through the end of the tunnel, but I'm not yet quite convinced. She did end up drinking most of a kids size chocolate shake on Wednesday evening, but not without many tears involved. I am posting a few pictures of her and her hospital visit. The pics of her in the brown outfit are from this past Saturday evening 2 days into her sickness. She definitely got way worse after this and I thought she was bad when I took these pics. The reason I had her all fixed up even though she was sick, I was hoping that getting her out of the house would help as long as I kept her in the stroller and kept her germs contained. After this she obviously got a whole lot worse as you can see in the pictures at the hospital. The only place I have taken her since then is to my parents just so I could see more than the 4 walls of my living room, which can get quite claustrophobic after 6 days. Well this was way too many details, but here they are none the less. Please pray for her as we are still waiting for an end to this and praying that Aubrey will not get it as well. We are keeping the hand sanitizer close, but that can only do so much.

Click on the pic below for more pics.

Lindsey - sick August 2008