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If you’ve read the previous post, or are following James on Facebook, you are aware that he had a reaction to one or more vaccines he received a couple of weeks ago. I was holding off writing a blog post until he was back to normal. I hope that I’m not jumping the gun here or jinxing it, but it looks like he’s all better now, so here we go…
James should have had two years of preschool, but that first year he was out sick so much, Stacy and I don’t really think it counted. Seriously, I think he was out sick more than he was in school. This past year he had been doing so well in school and we wanted to see that continue. We asked the district if we could hold him back so that he could get another year of preschool before moving on to kindergarten. Unfortunately, the district denied our request so James will be moving up to kindergarten in the fall.
Before starting kindergarten, James would need to have a physical and have his vaccinations up to date. If it was up to me, I would have put this off until the last minute. Stacy is the complete opposite. The school year isn’t even over yet and she took him to the pediatrician on Tuesday, May 6th, for the physical and vaccinations. He was due for chicken pox; mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR); and diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTaP) vaccine. He got all three of those vaccines, and also got a TB test. Poor kid must have felt like a pin cushion!
Stacy said he was a bit cranky on the way home. I would be, too, if I was just jabbed with three needles and then pricked. It wasn’t until later that night that we knew something was wrong. Shortly after midnight, Stacy noticed that his heart rate was elevated. It was a lot higher than it normally is when he’s sleeping. She took his temperature, and it was 101 degrees. She gave him some Motrin, some extra water, and laid him on his cooling mat to see if that would help bring his temperature and heart rate down.
When Stacy got him up Wednesday morning, she noticed a hard bump on his left thigh. She called the pediatrician and he said that was the spot where the chicken pox vaccine was administered and asked if she could measure the bump. It measured about 2 inches round. The doc told her to keep an eye on it to see if it spreads. Fortunately, it didn’t.
I know this is a controversial subject, but I am just going to say it. Stacy and I are all for vaccines. Obviously, James was having a reaction to one or more of the vaccines, but we feel that they will protect him from getting the real illness. If you don’t believe in vaccines, that is fine. You have the right to your own opinion. I think I will just leave it at that. Nothing else to say.
Friday morning James woke up without a fever and all of his numbers were back to normal. We thought that the reaction he was having to the vaccinations was finally over. His heart rate was a bit elevated later on Friday, but everything else seemed fine.
He had a decent day on Saturday, with his numbers similar to the ones on Friday. (When I say numbers, we mean his heart rate and O2 saturation (or sats)). He did have some yellowish discharge from his nose on Saturday, though. That usually means the body is fighting something…but his numbers were pretty good, so we didn’t worry about it too much.
Friday and Saturday might have been the calm before the return of the storm. Sunday was Mother’s Day, and since James seemed to be doing so much better, we went over to spend the day with Stacy’s side of the family. This may have been a mistake. Shortly after we got there, James’ heart rate started climbing and his sats dropped. We gave him a little bit of belly time to see if his number would improve. When they didn’t, we decided to pack up and head home.
When we got home, he was satting in the mid-80s, his heart rate was around 170, and he had a temperature of 102.2. We got him comfortable in his bed with a bit of oxygen. By 1:30 am both his sats and heartrate were 95…which are good numbers.
Monday morning Stacy got him up and gave him one of his compression vest treatments. Sats were staying in the mid-90s without oxygen, his heart rate was in the 140s, which is a bit high, but better than they were on Sunday, and his temperature was down to 99 degrees. For the most part he was doing better.
Stacy did put a call into the pediatrician on Monday morning just to let him know what was going on. He wasn’t overly concerned and thinks that James may have just overheated. The weather was in the 80s on Sunday, which is a bit warm for this time of year, and since James’ body doesn’t regulate its temperature like the rest of us, maybe that was it.
After Stacy got off the phone with the pediatrician, she put a call into palliative care to see if a nurse could stop by just to take a look and listen. She showed up early afternoon and said that he sounded congested, but it was all in the upper airway. His lungs sounded fine, so there was no concern about pneumonia. She didn’t think there was any reason to take him to the doctor. That night his fever was back up to 103 degrees. We called the doc on his cell, and he asked us to bring him in to see him in the morning. He wanted to “get eyes on him.”
Tuesday morning it was off to the pediatrician. The doc checked him out and was going to prescribe an antibiotic to kick this bug out of James’ system. We discussed this and voiced a concern that we’ve been having lately. James has been on so many antibiotics over the past couple of years. If he takes antibiotics often enough will his body eventually become immune to them and just won’t work when we really need them? The doc agreed.
Obviously if his lungs sounded like it could be pneumonia, that would warrant antibiotics. But this was different. His lungs sounded perfectly fine. He just kept spiking a fever. We think it was just his body reacting to one or more of the vaccines that he was given the week prior, and we just needed to let it run its course. The doc was fine with holding off on antibiotics as long as we could keep the fever under control. Stacy started him on Motrin Monday night when his fever spiked to 103 and that brought the fever down. Unfortunately, his temperature started working its way back up on Tuesday afternoon. For whatever reason, the Motrin wasn’t helping, and when it his fever got up to 102 degrees, we had the doc call in a prescription for an antibiotic.
It looks like that was all he needed…just a little antibiotic to do its magic and get James healthy again. He was doing so much better on Wednesday that we started discussing going back to school. It was the middle of the week, so should we just keep him home the rest of the week and if he’s still doing good, we can send him back next week?
Ah, but he has a track meet on Friday. Okay, fine. Thursday morning all of his numbers were good, and his fever was gone so we discussed if we should send him back to school Thursday or give him one more day of rest and send him back on Friday. James can’t speak for himself, but we got the sense that he was itching to go back to school and see his classmates, nurse, and teacher, so he went back to school on Thursday.
Did some of you get hung up on “track meet” in the last paragraph? James is part of the Illinois Special Olympics Young Athletes Program. Although James can’t do much physically and needs assistance, we still think it’s a good experience for him. Unfortunately, the meet was cancelled due to the weather. James was a bit upset:
I said that I was going to hold off posting about this illness or whatever until we knew he was over it. It is Saturday and James has been back to his normal self since Wednesday so we think he is finally over this. I really hope I’m not jinxing it by posting this. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. Keep your fingers crossed that whatever this was doesn’t return after he’s done with the antibiotics.
