In hospital again

On Wednesday (21/3/2007) morning Raphael started coughing after one of his vomits. After this did not stop for a while, Annie took him to our GP who was concerned that he might have vomited his NGT out of his stomach into his lung. She pulled his tube out but when this didn't stop his coughing, she sent Raphael to hospital.

Annie called me at work and asked me to come into hospital. I went to the emergency room but it was closed. Huh? Emergency room closed!?!? Oh no wait... the new emergency room has opened in Liverpool street. I had thought that the "emergency" sign in Argyle street must have removed by vandals or drunks.

So I went to the new emergency room and found Annie there. It wasn't long before Raphael was brought into the treatment area and a doctor came down from paediatrics to have a look at him. His temperature wasn't too bad and so he wasn't put on antibiotics immediately like last time. He had a sitting chest x-ray and the initial cursory examination showed no obvious problems in his lungs. Later when the x-ray was enlarged and examined closely, our normal paediatrician found some signs of a previous infection in his lungs.

After a few hours he was transferred up to the paediatric ward and he stayed there that night. His oxygen level was a little on the low side so the nurses tried to give him oxygen with a mask and later with little nostril tubes (I don't know what they are called). But he struggled a lot with this tube on and it seemed as though all his struggling seemed to result in his oxygen level going down rather than up.

The following day (22/3) his temperature had come down and he had stopped coughing. We were getting ready to go home but took the chance to see the dietician while Raphael was still an inpatient.

We are going to continue with primarily feeding him with Infatrini in the short term because his vomiting of solids other than purée causes difficulty in managing a balanced diet. The dietician suggested a number of reducing solids to purée so we will try some of those suggestions out soon. Feel free to leave comments about how to purée meat down to a fine paste if you have any suggestions.

Just before we were about to leave he had his temperature taken again and it was rising again. A paediatrician had a look at him and took blood to have it tested. When the results came back they showed that his white blood cell count was elevated. He was put on intravenous antibiotics again. Raphael is a terrible fiddler and so his line was taped in well and bandaged over the top to stop him from ripping out his line.

He stayed in hospital till today (Saturday 24/3). The antibiotics seem to have worked their magic and he is back to his normal, cheery, smiley self. We will be giving him antibiotics through his NGT three times a day for the next seven days to remove this last infection.