Pyelonephritis

My world has been on hold since Monday. Michael woke up with a stomach ache, but he felt well enough to go to school on Monday morning. He called me mid-morning and said he felt sick and wanted to come home, so I picked him up from school. He had a high fever and felt nauseous, so I gave him some acetaminophen and let him lie down on the couch watching TV most of the day. By Tuesday he wasn’t better and the fever was still disturbingly high, and the pain had moved to his side. Traci and I were worried that it was appendicitis, so we called our doctor’s office and they recommended that we take Michael to the emergency room.
They gave him morphine for the pain, and did a CT scan. Luckily the appendix looked normal, and we were relived that they didn’t have to cut him open. The radiologist said the kidneys looked like they could be infected, but they would need a urine test to be certain. Michael hadn’t eaten or drank much all day because of the nausea, so they couldn’t get a urine sample immediately. They did draw blood, however, and Michael’s white blood cell count was highly elevated. A nurse started an IV to hydrate him and give him some antibiotics. They admitted him to the hospital and gave him a room, and finally a few hours later he peed. The urine sample showed negative for a kidney infection, but all the symptoms pointed that way. They did an ultrasound the following day, Wednesday, which also indicated that a kidney infection was the likely cause.
Michael still had a fever and pain throughout his stay until this morning, when his temperature finally got down to and remained at normal. His doctor stopped by this evening and released him, with a prescription for more antibiotics and instructions to call the hospital if the fever or pain return. Michael’s been lying on the couch and watching TV since he got home several hours ago, but somehow that’s less boring to him than lying in a hospital bed watching TV. 🙂 I haven’t done much of anything since we got back from our camping trip on Sunday evening, but maybe by tomorrow I’ll have a writeup and some photos and video from our trip here. I’m glad he didn’t get sick while we were camping–having a sick kid while being a couple of hours from home would have made this an even more stressful event.

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