Rotavirus

At about 5 am on March 15th Preslie woke up throwing up. After a few hours she had diarrhea with vomiting. We called the doctors office when they opened and asked if they had any advice on what we could do to help her since she couldn't keep anything in. They told us some things to try and to watch for dehydration. They said if she does get dehydrated to take her to Primary Children's. Luckily, Courtney was off so the two of us spent the whole day trying to comfort her and get her to drink just enough to keep it down. We were so hopeful each time that that would be the time she kept it down. Finally around 6 pm we decided that she was dehydrated and needed some help. We took her straight to Primary Children's Medical Center. We watched a few people check in at the front desk and be assessed by the nurse and then they would sit and wait. When it was our turn to check in they nurse took her temperature and told us to get her blanket off her right away, then she checked her heart rate and told us that we were going straight back to a room. While we were walking she was paging people saying she had a red patient and needed to know what room then she started paging a doctor telling them that she had a RED patient. We were freaking out! We got into the room and the nurses and doctors met us there. They told us her heart rate was 230 and she had a high fever. They decided pretty fast to give her an IV for some fluid and some Motrin for her fever. Then we just had to wait. After a few hours she still wasn't happy so they decided it would be best to keep her overnight to get her hydrated. At the time they just thought it was some kind of intestinal virus and that we would just need to wait it out. They had mentioned Rotavirus but thought it was unlikely. We moved to a rapid treatment room to spend the night. Pres wanted a bottle so bad so they decided to give her some pedialyte. As soon as she drank it, it came back up, all over me. Court gave me his undershirt to wear and as soon as I changed she had an explosion out the other end and I was covered again. The nurse was nice enough to order me sweats to wear. Every few minutes Pres would scream in pain and then have a really bad diaper so the nurse decided to test her for Rotavirus and it came back positive. Rotavirus is an intestinal virus that starts with vomiting followed by horrible stomach cramps, diarrhea, and a fever. It is very, very, VERY contagious and lasts up to 9 days! There was nothing they could do for it except keep her hydrated. Every time we thought she was doing better she would get worse. After being there all night and part of the next day they decided to do an ultrasound to make sure her intestines hadn't gone inside itself. Court and I were so stressed especially when the ultrasound tech asked us if they had done any other tests on her. We kept thinking the worst because they weren't telling us otherwise. Luckily, she was fine, it was just the Rotavirus causing her so much pain. She still couldn't keep much of anything down on Saturday and we had to change bad diapers a few times an hour so they decided we had to stay another night. The doctor we had on Sunday was so great and wanted to help us get her out of there so we got to order her some food and try to get her to be normal again. After spending most of the day doing that she started feeling better and we got to come home. It was a long weekend but we were so grateful to have a place like Primary Children's to help our baby. She still had bad diapers for days but finally got better. We spent so much time cleaning and disinfecting our house and ourselves trying to keep Gavin from getting it but a week after Preslie started it he got it. It wasn't so bad for him. He threw up one night and had a fever for a few days. Hopefully we have had our sickness for the year! Here are some pictures of her stay in the hospital.