A Scary ER Visit

This happened a few weeks ago but I've been holding off sharing... Here goes it.

A few weeks ago on a Friday was Jack's 9mo checkup. The doc said he is doing great, up to 21 lb 4 oz, 29 inches and she was happy with all of his developmental milestones.

He was his normal happy self, flirting with all the nurses.

Then he got his prevnar shot (pneumonia vaccine). He has gotten this twice before (2mo & 6mo) and was supposed to get it at 6 months, but he had had a cold at the time so they pushed it off. He seemed okay in the afternoon, a little tired, but nothing worrisome. Around 6:00 that night he fell asleep at a family party (weird) and wasn't his normal happy self... very fussy. He was sleeping on my Mom and she felt that his breathing was getting pretty rapid. My aunt is a nurse so she took his vitals... His temp was just over 102 and his heartrate was 200. We called the pediatrician and the doctor on call said 200 was the magic number and to head to the ER at the children's hospital ASAP and did we want an ambulance. WHOA. We opted out and Jay sped there. Sped.

In triage, his temp was 103 and the same 200 heartrate. We got rushed through to a nurse and they set him up with one of those pulse readers on his toe so that the whole time he was there they could monitor it. They gave him some ibuprofen in hopes that his fever would go down. With all the poking and prodding his heartrate wouldn't drop below the 180-190 range. (They wanted to see it under 140) They attempted an EKG around 9:30 or so but after all the poking and it being 2 hours beyond his normal bedtime, he was NOT having it. He squirmed screamed kicked and they weren't able to get a reading. By 10:30 they wanted to do another one but our doctor had called them and said if we didn't want to do it at that time, it could wait until Tuesday. We opted for that and with his heartrate finally down to the 150 range, they let us go home with instructions to call our pediatrician in the morning with an update.

"Sleeping" was hard that night. Well not for him, he passed out right away but I think I was up every single hour checking on him.

He woke up with a fever, but not as severe and the Tylenol kicked in pretty quickly. My stepmother came over a few times that next day (another nurse) and took his temps and pulse. His temp had dropped to the 99-100 range and his heartrate was down to 120 (phew). We rested all day on the couch, watching Mickey, giving him lots of fluids and staying on top of the Tylenol.
Truth be told... this parenting thing is pretty stressful. And it's only the beginning.

A few days later we went for another EKG and it all looked perfect, so the elevated pulse was just a reaction to the shot and not something of larger concern. Thank God.

To end on a happy note. A few days later her was 100% back to his normal self so we went to the Disney store to celebrate. The boy loves his Mickey.