As I wrote before, Sawyer seemed to be getting sick on Christmas Eve night. And then the following day, on Christmas, we seemed very much sick. He didn't have a cough or a stuffy nose. He wasn't throwing up or anything. He didn't have any of the normal symptoms. But he laid around the house all day, not doing much. He fell asleep twice, just randomly on the couch while we were all opening presents, and then once in my bed after he crawled into bed to snuggle with me. He didn't eat hardly anything that whole day, and he only got up to play a few times. His neck also seemed to be hurting him a lot. Anytime someone grabbed or touched his neck, he screamed in pain, and it looked a little bit swollen on the right side.
The day after Christmas, he wasn't at all improved, so I made a doctor's appointment for him at our pediatrician's office. Daniel and I both took him to the doctor, because we could leave the other kids with mom and dad at the house. They decided to stay a few more days after Christmas with us. The doctor checked him out and ran tests for covid, strep and flu, all of which came back negative (we discovered after some time... some of the results took some time). Because of his neck issues, she advised us to take him to the emergency room at Primary Children's Hospital on the chance that we were dealing with meningitis.
It was late afternoon by the time we walked into the hospital with Sawyer. They got him checked in, we waited, and eventually were called back to a room. The doctors we met with there said immediately that they were not worried about meningitis, but that they thought it was some kind of infection or abscess in his neck causing him pain and discomfort and fevers. They ran a CT scan on him to see if they could find any fluid buildup in his neck... which they couldn't. There was no abscess for them to work on. And so, their plan of action was to admit him into the hospital and administer antibiotics and fluids through an IV to make the infection go away. An IV team came into the room and went to work putting an IV into his arm, in the crook of his elbow. He hated that. But he was fairly malleable because he was exhausted from having to spend all afternoon and evening in the doctors office and hospital. They took some blood tests, checking for inflammation markers, and administered antibiotics right away.
We made it into our own room in the hospital late that night, nearing midnight, I believe. The nurses got him all checked into his room with the fluids hooked up through the IV, and then they left us to sleep. I laid down with Sawyer in the hospital bed, and Daniel took the little side bed/couch thing. At around 1 in the morning, after we weren't really sleeping much, Daniel left the hospital so that one of us could get some sleep.
That night was rough. The IV machine kept beeping at us because Sawyer would bend his arm and cut off the running of the fluids through the IV. It woke us up several times, and the nurses and techs kept having to come in to turn the beep off and start the machine up again. Plus, they kept having to come in to check his vitals and bring in the antibiotics, fluids or tylenol. He and I finally got a good stretch of sleep around 2 or 3 in the morning for a couple of hours.
Daniel came back to the hospital that next day towards lunchtime, bringing clothes and things with him. We talked to the doctor about Sawyer's condition. They measured his inflammation markers and he said they were really high. The number he gave was 29, and normal is less than 1. He told us he wanted to keep Sawyer another night on antibiotics to see if we could get him feeling well enough to go home. He was still operating under the assumption that Sawyer had a (what sounds like) fairly common infection in the lymph nodes of his neck. (He didn't sound quite 100% sure that this is what was really ailing Sawyer.) Apparently kids get this kind of thing often. All they wanted was to see him eating enough on his own, drinking plenty of fluids, and those inflammation markers to make a downward trend. But, it meant another night in the hospital.
Daniel sent me down to the cafeteria to get food, considering I hadn't eaten almost anything in the past 24 hours. While I was down getting food, I ran into one of the women in our ward, Amanda Howells. She asked what we were doing at the hospital, and I tried to explain. She was there doing some test with one of her kids that had cancer years ago. Anyway, news spread quickly after that. I got a text shortly after from Hannah Kimball asking if all was okay. She had the compassionate service leader in our ward send something over facebook asking for meals for our family, and I started getting texts from a bunch of women asking if we were okay. It was so nice to be worried about and prayed for. We had so many people praying for us and thinking of us.
We've been in the hospital for the past 4 or 5 days, now. The days have kind of blurred together, and it's hard to keep straight what day it is. We had to cancel all of our plans for the week. We had intended to go to John's party, and we were going to visit family members (Bekah and her girls, and a play date with Cap). I also had an appointment for the temple. But, ah well. We were more concerned about Sawyer getting better and coming home. It's very boring and anxious to wait in the hospital, especially if you don't know what's really going on. Each morning, the doctor came in to talk to us and tell us the most recent results of the inflammation test. And the results were down, and then up again, and then down again, but never to his satisfaction. He said, the first couple of days, that some kids recover more quickly than others, and if he took longer, that was okay. But the last couple of days, he's said this isn't working like it should. And they've started testing for other things. More serious things. Like cancer. All of those tests came back negative, though.
Daniel and I have been switching off, taking shifts at the hospital. I spent a night, then he spent a night. Then me again, etc. We filled the days in the hospital mainly trying to get Sawyer to eat (which was unsuccessful the first few days, but has been better lately) and drink, and watching whatever he wanted to watch on TV. I had a chance, while sitting in the hospital, to catch up in my journal and read most of a book (which I binged on one of the sleepless nights in the hospital. That was an awful night. I didn't sleep more than a handful of 20 or 30 minute stretches. The machine kept beeping at us, and I kept nagging at Sawyer to straighten his arm, which frustrated him to no end. After that night, we had the IV team come put an IV in his hand instead, so that wouldn't be a problem anymore. Thank the heavens.). Sawyer watched Cars multiple times, Lion King three times, Thomas the Train (spare me. Seriously), and this new show called Go Buster, which he watched almost exclusively once we found it on Youtube. One day I tried downloading a book from the library to my phone, one of the Mercy Watson books, and read a little to him. But he wasn't super patient with that and just asked to watch TV again.
After the first few days, we got him to eat a little better. Every little bite was a huge victory. Michael, Michelle, Brixton and Mackenzie came to visit Sawyer in the hospital one day. They brought him toys and a stuffed animal and a candy bar. Then Michael and Mackenzie went down to the cafeteria and brought back a bunch of food for Sawyer: chicken nuggets and fries, cheesecake, and fruit snacks. Sawyer looked visibly excited by the nuggets and fries they brought and ate more that day than he had all the week up to that point. It was wonderful!
Anyway, that Friday they left, I was hanging with Sawyer in the hospital, and Daniel came late in the afternoon to take his shift in the hospital. He'd left the kids at his parent's house. I started feeling that sickness coming on all day that day. That night, after getting the kids to bed and going to bed myself, I felt freezing and had to get up and bundle up: sweatshirt, socks and an extra blanket on the bed. Then yesterday, of course, I ended up being very sick: chills, body aches, massive headache anytime I tried to get up. I felt awful. And of course that meant that I couldn't go take my turn with Sawyer in the hospital, which made me feel so badly. I wanted to be there with him, and I also wanted to let Daniel rest. But there was no way with how I felt, and I didn't want to spread what I had to everyone in the hospital. So Daniel had to keep pushing through on his own. We asked his parents to come help him in the afternoon and evening; his dad went in the late afternoon so Daniel could come home, and then his mom stayed the night there for us, so Daniel could sleep.
The kids and I have mostly been watching TV and laying around the last couple of days. Jack was sick most of yesterday right along with me. He went and took a nap in his bed VOLUNTARILY. That's a sure sign that a kid is sick. So, Jack and I did not go to church today. We were still quite hot on the wings of illness. But I let both of the girls walk themselves to and from church. Brooke was very anxious not to miss her very last time in primary, and I couldn't keep her home. We watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers together this afternoon/evening. The kids loved it! It was very fun. And after putting Jack to bed tonight, the girls and I played games until way past their bedtimes.
A list of the people who helped us and checked in on us: Kimberly Davis, Amanda Howells (helped spread the news of us being in the hospital), Hannah Kimball (brought us dinner one night), Sarah, DeAnna, both of our families, Hailey Shoemaker, Lauren Harrison (came over with a treat for the kids and a bag full of gifts for Sawyer), Stephanie Mitchell, Liisia and Cody Putnam, Jessica Tanner, Annette Perkins.
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