Dexter turned 17 months today. It has been a horrible week for him though. Since Friday night, he has had diarrhea and vomiting. He started eating less and less. He stopped drinking the day before yesterday. His energy gradually diminished day by day, until yesterday. He slept 12 hours - 2 hours more than usual. He had a dry diaper. He was very pale and I put him in his crib on his side and he just laid there for a few minutes before trying to get up. I couldn't put him down because he kept crying. He wouldn't eat and wouldn't drink. It was time to go to the doctor.
We went to the doctor and they gave us some Pedialyte. He drank some at the office and he enjoyed the popsicle. As soon as we got home, he had massive diarrhea. He went down for a nap and I finally got to work. He woke up 2 hours later. He wouldn't drink. Our nanny tried to get him to drink every way possible - different cups, pedialyte and water, everything imaginable. Nothing worked, so I came home and forced him to drink a couple syringe-fulls. That wasn't fun at all and it didn't work because he vomited less than a half hour later.
I took him back to the doctor. He was so weak. He only wanted to be held and he was very irritable. He cried and cried at the doctor's office. He was nearly impossible to comfort. He was very dehydrated and since he wasn't drinking on his own. We had to take him to the ER.
Luckily, the second doctor we saw at the medical center was our normal doctor. He knew Dexter was very, very sick. He also had ER duty, so he looked over us the entire night. I took 2 hours to get into a room. When we finally did get one, Dexter fell asleep. He was very pale and his eyes were very purplish around them. He looked like he had vampire make-up on. The nurses came in while he was asleep and got everything ready to do the IV. He was fine and slept through nearly the whole prep. Dad and another nurse had to hold him down while another nurse inserted the IV. I ended up helping towards the end because it needed to be taped up and his arm was splinted to keep it straight. He screamed and struggled. It was so sad because he dind't have a lot of energy and he was just awakened to 2 people sitting on him and a needle stuck in his arm. He was so scared, it's the worst thing to see your baby like that.
He calmed down quickly luckily. I held him and we watched some truly awful TV. It took about 20 minutes for the initial dose. The doctor suggested we do a second, smaller dose as well while we waited for the blood results to come back. The blood work only showed that he was dehydrated. Dexter fell asleep again while we were awaiting the paperwork to be discharged. It was way past his bedtime. He was so exhausted, he barely woke up while they pulled out the IV. We finally arrived home at midnight. It was a long day.
Today, he's better. He has color in his cheeks. He's playing again. We've still had to force syringe-fulls of Pedialyte down him all day, but he drank a few ounces on his own. It's still only about half of what he should be drinking. The diarrhea seems to be gone and he hasn't vomited in the last 24 hours. I hope he continues to get better. I never want to see him like that again.
