The never ending fever scare

I'm sure if you're reading you've probably been following what's been going on with Brayden on Facebook. Needless to say the last week has been ROUGH!  On Monday Brayden started with a fever. On a side note, I jokingly (although it's not actually funny) call Bray my "fever kid"  he runs a fever every time he's sick and even a low grade when teething.  Jason and I both were notorious for running high fevers as kids, so i shouldn't be surprised.

my poor baby 

Anyway, the fever started Monday and was around 102 degrees. So i started the usual regiment of all the "tricks' to help break it, alternating tylenol/advil, luke warm baths, cool rags, light clothing ,you name it. The odd thing was, was that he wasn't presenting with any other symptoms, so i figured it was probably the beginning of a stomach virus or strep throat again.  By just Tuesday the fever was the same. The meds were keeping his temp around 101-102 so it was somewhat manageable.  Then things got worse. No matter what I did the fever kept creeping up. He was waking up multiple times at night screaming and crying BURNING so hot. Even with the meds his temp was rising about a degree a day. And still, no other symptoms.  I had called the pedes on wed when is fever was lingering around 103.6 only after 2 hours of meds.  At this point i was alternating doses of meds as per  the dr every 3 hrs.  So it seemed really ridiculous that his fever would be so high.  The pedes told me to keep doing all the things i was doing and if we hit the 72 hr window on Thurs and it was still raging to bring him in.  His eating and drinking were definitely starting to suffer. He was still taking in some food and drinking an "ok" amount that this point but I was REALLY worried b/c it didn't make sense why he was so sick. He was still peeing in their recommended every 6-8 hours but it was definitely a stretch in between.

You know he's sick when he SITS and cuddles

Thursday was a a nightmare. The fever at it's highest was 104.6 and was consistently staying around 103-104.  The poor kid was crying all the time, lethargic, and just wanted to be held. As soon as the drs office opened I called and they got him in for an appointment.  We saw Jenna the nurse practitioner, she's really great.  She was really concerned that at this point it had been 72 hrs, which is when fevers usually start to break with viral infection, and he was presenting with no other symptoms. His lungs and chest were clear and ears looked okay so they did a strep test and wanted to do a urine collection to rule out a Urinary Tract Infection. Normally UTI's are not a big concern for boys but Jason and I both get them so they wanted to make sure that wasn't the case. Not that I was hoping he had strep but I was hoping it would be something simple enough that a course of antibiotics would fix. But the strep test was negative.  Urine collection was interesting. He was not a fan of the "sticky bag" around his penis but we were able to get a sample. Since he wasn't drinking much it took like 4 hours to get him to pee.  The test came back negative, which i was SO relieved about. If it had been positive they said they would of had to cathederize him to get a sterile sample to send to the lab, and I did NOT want to have him go through that.  His urine did come back positive with the presence of  ketones which just reiterated he was dehydrated and not eating enough.  :(

At the pedes

Friday the fever was still raging, staying high.  At this point I'm really getting scared. The dr sent us for blood work to see if they could figure out what was going on. Doing blood work on a dehydrated 13 month old was a nightmare, he cried, I cried, it was not fun. The techs at the lab were really great and only had to stick him one time but they were digging around in his arm with the needle for well over a minute and had to take 4 vials.  I felt AWFUL for him, it felt like  the longest blood drawl ever.  He did so great considering but it was still hard.

By Saturday morning the results were in and of course they were inconclusive. So they still have NO idea what made him so sick with fever.  Fortunately by Saturday the fever was staying around 101and lower with the meds and looked like it could finally be breaking. HUGE sigh of relief.  Today he's doing even better. The pedes office has been calling every morning to see how he is making out.  If he had a fever this morning they wanted to bring him back in. Not that they would be able to really do anything.  But this morning his temp was normal. Earlier this afternoon he was a little warm but a dose of Tylenol put it back down.

Needless to say it's been a rough week. I hate the feeling of not being able to make things better for Brayden when he doesn't feel good. And it was really scary not knowing, and still not knowing what the hell is causing the fever in the first place. Here's hoping we don't have to go through this again any time soon.  I just keep praying this fever stays away.  I hate the idea of giving him medicine to start with let alone giving him SO much meds with in a 5-6 day span.  That can't be good for him. :(