Tess came home from hospital on Monday, and we’re so glad to have her back home. She’s doing a lot better in that she doesn’t have a temperature any longer, her colour has come back, and so has her personality. In hosptial she was just so sick, either crying or asleep. The bummer is that she seems to have picked up a bit of a respiratory infection as well, so I took her to her GP today to get her checked out, and she was fine. But we’ve still got a lot to deal with. Because she got such a bad infection (which was a UTI, but probably involved a kidney infection as well) she has to have a lot of follow up tests as well. She has a renal ultrasound next week, a follow up with a pediatrician the week after, a few weeks after that a nuclear scan of her kidney to check for signs of scarring.
Why did she got a UTI in the first place, as she’s been taking a daily dose of antibiotics to treat the renal reflux she was diagnosed with at 5 months old? Well it turns out that she got a bug that was resitant to the bactrim she was taking. The disquieting thing is that the new antibiotic she’s on also has strain-resistant bugs, and there’s further possibilities she’ll have other infections. The reason why they’re sending her for further tests is to check whether there’s permanent damage to her kidneys and to check to see whether her condition is serious enough for surgery. Needlesstosay, we’re all hoping for the best?
But actually the hard thing right now is the patching therapy for her eye. We missed one day hospital because Tess was really ill (ie. not really awake) but the rest of the time we tried to keep up with the patching. But she is HATING it and fighting it. She screams whenever the patch is on, rips it off, and keeps ripping off replacement patches until her face is bleeding. We’ve been using pediatric arm restraints when desperate and she also hates these and screams. I’m not sure why she’s fighting it so much, but my guess is that it has something to do with the hospital visit, the difficult time she went through having IVs and all sorts of tests done. Whatever the reason it’s very stressful and feels traumatising for us and her. In short, it sucks right now, but we’re trying our best to be strong and help Tessa get through this difficult time.
Filed under: Doctors, Illness, Tess | 1 Comment »
