Solitary

The latest report is that James's temperature had gone back down into the normal range, which is good. The "quick" urine analysis showed increased white blood cells (and some red ones), which may suggest a UTI. However, it'll take the usual 48 hours for them to get results back on the cultures for infections (or perhaps sooner if something becomes positive), and they're also doing swabs to test for flu and respiratory infections, which apparently take about the same amount of time. He has a cough, but other than that is not really showing signs of being sick. He'd even taken 80 ml from a bottle this morning -- a new record for him, and almost his full amount. (I'd actually noticed a little cough several days ago, but I chalked it up to having some secretions from being on the respirator during surgery, and then when I heard it yesterday I assumed it was reflux, because it was in the middle of his bottle. It sounds like what he's having now is a little more frequent than that, so we'll see.) They started him on antibiotics, which is the usual precautionary measure.

All this means that he most likely won't be discharged until early next week (that is, assuming he doesn't start showing additional symptoms or problems -- keep your fingers crossed!) They'd want to wait until the tests come back and they're able to treat whatever it turns out to be, and it sounded like even with a best case scenario, they would be a bit reluctant to do a weekend discharge because it's hard to coordinate the follow-up care. Generally, they schedule a pediatrician appointment the day after discharge.

Because of the possibility of him having a respiratory illness or virus, they've moved him to one of the isolation rooms off of Pod C. (He's been put in solitary!) If we go visit him, we'll have to wear a mask and gloves. I'm kind of sad about him not being in Pod F any more (especially since a lot of his regular nurses, including his primary, were working today -- it would have been a wonderful day to say our goodbyes). The good thing about the isolation rooms is that they're quieter, so he might be able to get better rest. But I worry that if his pacifier falls out of his mouth, it might take longer for someone to notice and put it back for him!

We decided not to go in tonight, because on the chance that he does have something contagious, we didn't want to worry about passing it on to Matthew. (We've checked Matthew's temperature several times since we got the news about James, and it's been normal; he doesn't seem to be acting sick at all. And we do have a pediatrician appointment for him tomorrow -- the new patient visit that was supposed to be for both boys -- so we'll have our bases covered.)

This all reminds me of the day the boys were born. It was a Thursday, and I was supposed to be discharged that day -- in fact, they'd already done all the paperwork and Mike was there to pick me up. Things looked fine in the morning, but when they were working on getting one last monitoring session on the babies, I had increasingly terrible waves of back pain that they eventually figured out was labor. So, it was good that I was still in the hospital when that happened (I was 7 cm dilated by the time they figured it out and they rushed me upstairs for the C-section immediately), and similarly, we're glad if James had to have one more bout of something, that they noticed it when he was still in the hospital rather than us having to figure it out (and possibly take him to a germy E.R.) once he was already home. We're really disappointed about not having him home (and healthy), but the bright side is that they caught it when they did.