Unexplained Blood Infection

Around 11 pm Caleb finished his feed. He threw up and had a bout of diarrhea. No big deal...babies do this. He only did it once. But we called Dr. Kerns and asked what to do. She said to give him pedialyte once we knew he wasn't throwing up anymore. He didn't have a fever or anything else. So my mom and I went to Walgreens around midnight. Steven and I slept in the living room and Caleb slept on daddies chest. Before we went to sleep we filled Caleb's bag with Pedialyte because he was fussing like he was hungry. That was around 1 am. At about 4 am Steven got up telling me to get a rag. He had thought that Caleb had wet through his diaper but his mic-key had come out and there was fluid all over Steven. We were a little freaked out because we had never had to put in a mic-key and we were worried because we didn't know how long it had been out. We had no clue how the thing came out. The bulb was intact and full. Steven couldn't get the mic-key to go in all the way so I called Dr. Islam's office (Ped surgery). The doctor on call told us to come on in to the ER to make sure placement is ok. Steven finally got it in and taped it down but something told us to go in anyway.

When we got to the ER we were met by Peds Surgery. The mic-key had come out again...bulb and all. They popped another one in and said for us to try a feed to make sure everything is working right. Caleb only took about 35 cc's and vomitted. They said he probably has a bit of a bug and to watch him. While they were getting all the paperwork filled out we waited in the room and watched "In the Heat of the Night". :) Steven was holding him and I decided to go over an touch Caleb's forhead. He felt a little warm. I asked the nurse if we could take his temp. It was about 100.4. I think 100.3 is their cut off. So they said they wanted to keep him over night for observation. While they were trying to get us a room, I noticed the moniter that took his vitals climbing. His blood pressure went up to 228 and now he was burning up. So once again I went to the nurse & said something is wrong his bp is getting too high. She thought it was the monitor reading wrong & I told her that I knew how to read a monitor that somethings wrong. She went & checked it out. I could see the concern in her eyes. His temp was now over 103. All of a sudden a team of dr's & nurses flooded the room. They said he is going into respitory failure and was septic...they needed to intubate him. My heart sank. I thought this is it. Steven went with Caleb to the other room where they intubated him. I couldn't watch. I sat there & cried in an empty space. They took my son. God what was happening?? Several nurses and staff came and knelt down beside me. I could tell they were holding back their tears. I asked if my son was going to die. They just looked at me & said it wasn't good. I called my mom who was at our house with our son Devin. I told her that Caleb crashed & she needed to get there quickly. I needed her there too. That was one of the hardest calls I've had to make. A little later we were sent to PICU. He had all kinds of tubes connected to him. It was horrible. They had a line in his collar bone area for access. They told us he had some sort of infection and started him on major antibiotics. They took blood for cultures to see what we were dealing with. Turned out to be Streptococcus Veridans. They couldn't understand how he could've gotten it. It is rare for a child his age to get it. He was fighting so hard. Later they came in and said they needed to do a blood transfusion. What?? I was terrified. But he wouldn't have made it if we didn't. They had to also tie his hands up because he kept trying to get the tubes. He is a fiesty one. We ended up having to stay for 10 days in the hospital because he needed that long of antibiotic treatment. The sepsis did a number on his little body. But if it weren't for what we believed were the hands of God pulling Caleb's mic-key out that night, he would have died. It happened so fast. A wonderful part of this event was that we could say that God put Caleb right where he needed to be. No dr or nurse could explain what happened. I don't know how many times someone came in asking for us to explain what happened again. They had to hear it for themselves. And I was happy to keep telling them the story.