Holy Crap, what a stomach bug!

There has been a nasty stomach flu making it's way through all of our friends' families.  Thursday, a week ago, Dalton came down with it.  He woke up saying his stomach felt sick and by noon he had thrown up like 6 times.  By bedtime, he was feeling much better.  The next day, I kept him home again, but he was fine.  He kept asking why I wouldn't let him go play wii.  At 2.00, I relented. By dinnertime, he was eating at the table with us.

So, I wasn't too surprised when Bryant starting throwing up in the middle of the night last Thursday morning, but it was an entire week after Dalton's bug, so I was beginning to think we had skirted the worst of it.  No such luck.  It was seriously the worst night on record.  Rylan woke up screaming with leg cramps and I was up giving Brooklyn her paci or feeding her, or with Bryant, who was puking, LUCKILY in the toilet (what a fantastic thing), every hour, all night long.  By 2:00 am, I started feeling queazy, but I wasn't surprised, I often do when I'm up in the night with sick kids.  Power of suggestion, I guess.  By, 3:00, it bad enough to take a zofran (I keep them on hand, all ways.)  This is lovely, I know, but by 8:00 am I had dispelled so much fluid, from both ends that my hands were tingling.  That happens to me, quite often, when I get the flu and I get dehydrated, very quickly.  By that point, Carl was feeling quite ill too, so I called a friend to take me to get rehydrated.  1 bag of fluid and a zofran later, I was back home, around 11:30.  My friend helped me feed Brooklyn and put her down for a nap (Rylan and Dalton were off to school, Carl and Bryant were down in bed).  My friend left.  Within an hour all the drugs were off and I'd lost 6 lbs of fluid.  I called someone to come take Brooklyn and I was back to be rehydrated.  I ended up being sent from Urgent Care to the ER.  All in all, I was hooked to an IV from 8:00 am to 8:30 pm with a 2 hour hiatus.  I had 2 shots of phenergan, zofran, benedryll, and reglan and 5 1/2 bags of fluid.  All the while, dinner was brought, and fed to my healthy kids, someone took Brooklyn, Carl and Bryant were confined to their beds and Rylan and Dalton had after school playdates.  It was a long day.

Friday, Carl, Bryant and I laid around recovering.  By bedtime, I noticed that Brooklyn had not urinated ALL DAY so I called her caregiver from the day before and found out that she hadn't had a wet diaper in over 36 hours.  So, I was off again to the ER.  She hadn't eaten well while I was in the ER (even though she takes a bottle very well.)  There was a piece missing from her bottle, so it was quite leaky and we wondered if that was why she wasn't eating well.  In the ER, she had an ultra sound and an X-ray but was quite healthy looking.  Alert, happy, responsive, no signs whatsoever of dehydration, just no pee.  I fed her and they sent us home with instructions to come right back if she didn't pee over night.  She woke up soaked.  As I was doing the dishes, that had piled up, I noticed there was one bottle nipple that was defunct.  It had no hole in the top, at all.  Nothing was getting through and suddenly the events of the day before made sense.  When Carl packed her a day bag, in a sick haze, he just grabbed a new, unused, incomplete bottle out of the cabinet.  That poor baby had been trying to eat, for 12 hours and the nipple was working, but the bottle was leaking so there was no way to tell that she was getting NOTHING.   And we'd almost let the caregiver keep her overnight.  Its scary to think that things could have gotten serious with a defunct bottle all night.

But, here we are, over a week later and KNOCK ON WOOD, everyone is fine and healthy.  Hopefully we have reached our stomach bug, and ER visit, quota for the year!