Sunday, January 18, 2009

First Hospital Stay

So we've had our first Hospital stay at Children's. Thankfully it was only 24 hours, not much sleep had by anyone in the hospital the way the nurses & doctors come in and out of your room all night. Dominic has had a cold that just wouldn't go away for the last 3 weeks, it started when they all had pink eye. For the last week he had high fevers that were very hard to break. He was still eating very well but definitely not himself. He also started having this weird thing happening where he would turn his head to the side and his eyes would look up, we could tell it was something we've never seen before and it seemed calculated, it would happen over and over for a seconds then stop. I saw it Wednesday then Jeff saw it Thursday. So we called his Genetic doctor and because of his sickness, high fevers and odd tick we needed to bring him in. While were were there he had to get the IV fluids so that he got enough hydration for his muscles, very important with VLCAD when he is sick and poor guy also had to have a spinal tap, it was horrible, I hope that never again has to be done. Turns out he has beginning stages of pneumonia, the Adeno virus and an ear infection, so no wonder he had all these high fevers. His ck levels which are the muscle tissue break down levels that we normal get checked every other month or so are normally mildly elevated at 310 - 320, normal is 300. They were 900!! This scared me very much but the Doctor's said that that is what happens with someone with VLCAD when they are sick. He needs to drink frequently, an ounce an hour and get enough food to help keep from getting muscle bread down. Unfortunately he most likely feels this muscle pain. I'm hoping when he's older he can really tell me and we can keep him well hydrated during an illness. He had a EEG done at the hospital to check to see if they could tell if he had had seizures, what we described to the Doctor's sounded like small complex seizures, not the ones that go with a high fever. They usually can't tell in an EEG unless one is happening or it's a big one that changes the brain waves or what ever they are. His came out normal, very thankful for that. We have to watch him and if we see anymore they'd do further testing. I have not seen anymore and am hoping they stay away for good!
He's doing very well now, on antibiotics and they are helping tremendously. He's a bit weaker than he was a few days ago but he started walking during all of this!! He shocks me how strong he is even through an illness. He'll walk from one thing to another as long as it's not far away. I'm so thankful for all the prayers from everyone!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah!!!
Go Dominic Go.

Brigitte and Ben Johnson said...

I found your blog via an internet search on VLCAD. My 8 week old daughter tested positive on her newborn screening and we are currently running tests to see if she has the disease. They did additional blood tests at about a week old which came back negative. The DNA test they did at about 2 weeks old showed that she has one copy of the gene (a carrier). Our metabolic doctor at Mayo Clinic wanted to do a skin biopsy to confirm that she is just a carrier because apparently the DNA test can miss a gene (?). They also did a skin biopsy on my two year old daughter to see if she had VLCAD or not. Did they do a skin biopsy on Dominic and his brothers, or did they just rely on blood tests? As you can tell, we are still very confused. I hope Dominic is doing better!

De-De said...

Hi Brigitte,
On Dominic his newborn screening was so abnormally high in the very long chain fat that they were sure he had VLCAD, they did all the blood testing over as well and it still showed up as high but lower than the newborn screening. So the Geneticist told us we did not need to do a biopsy at that time. We did do a DNA test and it showed he has 2 mutated genes. We also had his 3 year old brother tested since the test was not available when he was born, they did the DNA test and he ended up not even a carrier. I hope that helps a little, it was very scary at first when we first found out through the nb screening, something we've never even heard of. Hopefully everything is fine with your little one and she's just a carrier, if she does end up having it, it has not been nearly as hard I as I originally thought and was told.