Hospital Stay July 2010

I called the on-call resident doctor the minute I got home. He told us to go to the lab to get some blood work done. A few hours later we got a call back saying we needed to get Makelle up to Primary Children's to be admitted. Her liver functions were way out of wack of what was normal for her.

After further testing, it was decided that Makelle also had an E-Coli urinary tract infection in addition to suspected Cholangitis. Later the GI Doc wondered if this wasn't really a true case of Cholangitis, but that maybe the UTI was causing the elevation of the bilirubin (making her eyes yellow).

They kept Makelle on 3 days of IV antibiotics. It was then decided that the UTI could be treated from home on oral antibiotics. So we went home thinking this was just a little scare. She always pulls out things so well. Surely this was just another bump in the road. She will pull out of it like she had always done before, right?

I went home with a resolve to diligently give her the maintance dose of antibiotics to prevent further infections (along with the other meds needed to keep the bile flowing and the blood pressure down). I promised myself to never miss a dose, and to keep that kidney and liver happy.

Makelle decided to "ham it up" a bit for a little sympathy at the hospital.

The nurses sometimes talk about how she smiles so much when she is sick. People have joked with her and say, "you look too well to be so sick." It bugged her a bit, so this is the show she gave me to prove her point.