Now we wait

So the appointment up in Wausau was a whirlwind. We went to the lab to have blood drawn and the nurse caught her finger on the cord when the blood was coming out...blood went spraying everywhere so they had to remove the needle and try the other arm. The other arm clotted and they ended up doing a finger stick. 30 minutes later and 30 straight minutes of crying...we went down to 1st floor to see Dr. Shepherd.

When she sat down with us we talked about the temp and the seizures. The temp was relatively normal when we got there but he was starting to heat up again. 4 seizures in 24 hours was a lot...so we need to keep his temp down and prevent any future ones.

Just as she started looking up the lab results on her little laptop thingy, a nurse came in with a message from the lab. Mason's white blood cell count was 38,000. Normal is 15,000. Obviously, this got us and Dr. Shepherd very worried so we called for a blood culture. He needed additional blood taken (clean blood) for a culture to be done.

Mason's blood draw for the culture took awhile. He was very dehydrated at this point, so we had to take a break to give him some Pedialyte and hope his veins opened up a bit. Dr. Shepherd was the one to collect the blood and she found a vein on Mason's head above his left ear. Poor kid...he was poked over 10 times today.

There are a couple possibilities...his blood is clearly fighting something. She said it is possible that his seizures could have caused his WBC to go up. Another possibility is a blood infection. The culture takes up to 72 hours to have results, but most of the types of infections she is worried about should show up within 24 hours...

Some blood infections (staff or strep) could be very dangerous for Mason because it could have been caused from or could affect his heart. If either of these bacteria come back positive, Mason will need a heart echo to check on his heart repairs (patches on the VSD/ASD and his mitral valve).

If there are no bacteria in the culture after 72 hours...we don't know much - other than he had a fever which caused seizures....so we still wouldn't know what caused the fever.

Mason also has a minor ear infection which they treated with a round of antibiotics.

SO - we are back home. Mason is sleeping after 3 straight hours of crying at the clinic. Our main goal is to keep his fever down and prevent seizures.

I will call the on-call doc tomorrow for his blood culture results. If he develops a weird rash, or has a bad seizure, we will take him to the hospital...

Gramma Mrdutt is coming to help us out, to help with the Mason "rotation". Mason is only comforted when we walk around with him and we are all starting to develop bad backs. :) It's always wonderful to have a nurse around to bounce ideas off of, because sometimes I think I'm just a worrisome parent.

Thank goodness for nurses and doctors. If we would have stayed home today, who knows what could have developed or what we might not be aware of...

Mothers - NEVER question your instinct. :)

Good night all....sweet dreams to everyone, especially Mason.