Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey Part 1

We have had a few long days and sleepless nights since my last post. Theo had been sick all last weekend when we were moving (as we all were) but didn't seem to be getting better. I attributed his intermittent fever, irritability, and fatigue to the really bad cold that he had caught last Friday, but by Tuesday I was beginning to get concerned when he got a fever again and was sleeping 16 hours a day.

I brought him into the Children's Hospital Emergency in Winnipeg on Tuesday evening because I was beginning to suspect that something more important, like a urinary tract infection, was lurking under the congestion and cough that he had. In retrospect, I should have suspected something a couple of days earlier and brought him in, but being super sick myself and also trying to pack and move the whole house, I suppose I was not being as intuitive about his sickness as I could have been. I thought that the worst case scenario would be a UTI, but since he hadn't once complained about pain while peeing, wasn't going to the bathroom any more than usual, or any other obvious symptoms, I really thought it was not the case. Once at the hospital, they took a urine sample and confirmed that he did in fact have a UTI.

Theo enjoying his brother's company at the hospital

As I wrote about in a previous post Theo's kidney is an object of interest for many a doctor. He only has one remaining kidney and only half of it functions properly. As soon as it was discovered that he had a UTI, the doctors went into a tizzy because they didn't know whether the infection had spread from his bladder to the kidney, and if it had, would the remaining functioning part of his kidney be completely damaged. They promptly hooked him up to an IV of some pretty potent antibiotics, which sounds much easier than the 1 1/2 hours of multiple nurses, numerous collapsed veins, and screaming which was actually involved before they managed to get the IV in properly.

Every doctor, resident, and student on the floor then decided to show up at intervals poking and prodding Theo and each one asking me to tell a detailed story of his life. I started getting a bit annoyed since it was midnight at this point and they were asking pointless things like "what did you crave during your pregnancy with him?". He eventually fell asleep on the bed in the ER in spite of people poking him every 5 minutes and we were finally admitted to a room in the Children's Hospital by 1 am. Dustin "slept" in his room the first night since I had to return to William who was being watched by my mother-in-law.

So bored

That long drive out of town to my in-laws in the dark was strange since it was the first time I have seriously pondered the fact that I am the proprietor of the only kidney available for transplant in our family. Theo and I share a rare-ish blood type and unfortunately are the only ones in our family with it. The test to show if his kidney was actually infected would take another 48 hours, and if it was, it would take another day or two to assess how much of his kidney was seriously damaged by it. I could feel the phantom scalpel tickling under the ribs on my back while I tried to prepare myself mentally for the possibility of having an organ removed on short notice.

To be continued...