Thursday, August 21, 2014

Sick Days

It's been a LONG week around here (and it's only Thursday!!). On Saturday afternoon, Jude started complaining about his stomach hurting. David and I didn't think too much about it, and we went on with our night as usual. (I should add here that Jude can be a VERY dramatic child and at this point in his life, his pain tolerance isn't super high. We never know when he says something is hurting if we should worry or just take it with a grain of salt.) As the night progressed, the situation just escalated, though. Jude was crying and talking about his stomach hurting pretty constantly, so we knew that something really was up. He had an awful night. None of us got a lot of sleep. We knew that we'd be taking a trip to the doctor on Sunday.

On Sunday, I took the girls to church like usual, and David got an appointment for Jude. Before they left home, Jude threw up. I was actually relieved when David texted me to tell me because I assumed that he just had a regular stomach bug. (This is probably the first and ONLY time you'll ever hear me say that a stomach bug was a relief.) They saw the on call doctor at the after hours clinic, and she ran a bunch of tests. She did a strep, blood, and urine test and everything looked normal. She thought maybe he was constipated (sorry for the TMI) and told us to give him Milk of Magnesia. As the day progressed, he still wasn't feeling well at all. He actually took a long nap that afternoon, and we were hoping that he would feel better when he woke up.
Sadly, he didn't feel better when he got up. We also began to think that he wasn't constipated after all. (Ahem.) He never got sick again, though. He had another bad night. Up most of the night crying. We even contemplated taking him to the ER at one point, but then he fell asleep for the rest of the night. I knew that we would be going back to the doctor as soon as the sun came up.

I took Jude to the doctor this time, and we saw our regular pediatrician. She repeated all of the same tests from the day before, and everything was normal again. She did say that his blood work looked more "viral" than it did the day before. She also pushed and mashed on his stomach a lot and didn't feel anything to alarm her. Based on the location of his pain, she was able to rule out appendix. She said her gut instinct was that it was a virus and then his blood work supported that. She said that he probably was just having a lot of cramping but that it would have to just run its course. We could give him Mortin for pain.

I left feeling a lot better about the situation. But as soon as we got home, and he started screaming in pain, I got nervous again and my mind went to dark places and terrible possibilities. I thought that it was probably a pretty harmless virus but not knowing for sure was so insanely frustrating for me. This went on for several days. By Wednesday, David and I had decided that if Jude was still in pain, we were going to take him in to have his stomach x-rayed. But, miracle of miracles, on Wednesday he acted perfectly normal all day! He played, he rolled around on the floor with Aubrey, he jumped and laughed and actually seemed happy. A few times, he mentioned his stomach hurting, but it was always with a grin on his face while he asked for "medicine." For the first time all week, when I went to get him up from his rest time, he had actually played instead of napped. I knew the real test would be that night, though. And.... he slept through the night! I was SO so thankful. It seems that maybe it was a virus after all and it's hopefully passed as quickly as it came on.

Anyway, all that to say, this whole sickness just took such a mental toll on me. I was just so worried about him all week, and I felt drained. It's just scary to not know exactly what's going on with your child. As is usually the case when we experience sick spells, it really reminded me to not take good health for granted. It's definitely no small thing to have healthy children, and it's good to be reminded of what a blessing that is.

I haven't blogged this week because I just haven't had the mental capacity to sit down and do it. So, last week may never be recorded on the ole blog ;) I am going to do my Whole30 post at some point because it was my last full week, so it needs to be documented.

I'm just so thankful that Jude seems to be on the mend. I don't think I'll really draw a full breath until we're farther away from the sickness, but I'm just so glad to see improvement. The last few days are not ones that I would want to repeat!

3 comments:

Angie said...

I'm so glad to hear he's feeling better and it wasn't anything serious!!

Amy said...

so glad he's okay! that IS scary and so unsettling when you don't know what's wrong (especially when it is stomach issues - ugh!) i live on pins and needles when my girls are sick with stomach aches just thinking that any minute could be THE minute…. bless your heart!
libbi gets like that sometimes when her stomach is upset and cramping (Sorry TMI) and it makes her so anxious because she doesn't know that it could just be gas pains and that it isn't something to worry about. she gets so worried that she'll throw up or is sick - when really its just an upset tummy. glad jude is on the med. hope all the sickness is behind y'all!

Kristal said...

Man, I TOTALLY get this. We just went through something similar when Isaac got the mumps. Having sick kids sucks, but even worse is not knowing for sure what is going on. It's definitely scary and emotionally draining. Glad he is better now!