Dear Evy:

Waking up Monday gave me new hope. Evelyn had a whole night of getting fluids and was in the best of hands. A whole team of doctors and nurses came in that morning to do rounds. She was still lethargic but was eating 2 – 3 oz every 2 hours. The day before, she didn’t want to eat anything and would only sleep. But seeing her holding her bottle and eating some applesauce was great. This was finally some signs of her improving, or so I thought. They called our hospital in Dearborn County once again to make sure nothing was growing on the cultures from Friday. Again, negative.

She was no longer vomiting, but still had the sever diarrhea and high fever. She would sleep between feedings. This was the 5th day of high temps. The doctors said that the viral stomach bug could take 5 days to run its course. Well today was day 5 so I was ready for it to be gone.

The nurse would come in every hour to check her IV and to weigh her diapers. She was still having diarrhea so they couldn’t tell if she was having any wet diapers. [To fast forward a bit, the answer was no. Her kidney’s had shut down, but that wasn’t discovered until Wednesday.]

They took her off fluids at 2:00pm and did a heel prick. Those were always torture for Evelyn. They couldn’t get much blood and would just squeeze and squeeze her tiny little heel. After the nurse did that, she came back in to let us know that they didn’t want the blood drawn until 5:00. She said she would keep this blood just incase they could use it at 5:00 instead of redoing it.

I’m not a medical professional, but I could figure out that answer. NO. Obviously the doctors wanted to check her levels after 3 hours of no fluids to see where she stood. Since she wasn’t getting any more fluids, the nurse didn’t have to check on her every hour. We were expecting to go home because we hadn’t heard anything else. She came back in at 5:00 and did another heel prick. She said it wouldn’t take long to get the results. We didn’t hear back from her. Evelyn had explosive diarrhea that went everywhere. She had poop on her bandages for the IV and bed. We called the nurses station and someone came and changed the bed.

At 7:30 another set of nurses came in to do a heel prick. We informed them that this would be the third time and we hadn’t even heard the results from the 5:00 test. They checked into their order before pricking her again. Well, one of Eveyln’s levels were ‘critical’ so they were retesting her Co2 levels in a more accurate way. Those levels came back fine. For a moment I thought we might finally get to go home.

A PCA came in at 8:00 just to check on things. She noticed the poop all over Evelyn’s bandage and started asking us some questions. We told her that our nurse went a little MIA. During the day I felt Evelyn was really improving, but during all the last heel pricks, she just laid there and didn’t make a peep. The last hours had went by so fast but I really didn’t feel that she was improving anymore. The PCA didn’t think Evelyn seemed well either and was asking us if she was this lethargic all day and how serious the diarrhea had been.

The PCA instantly started checking her over and said she was going to get the Charge Nurse. They called the team of doctors back in the room.  They said Evelyn was still dehydrated and that her pH was low. I asked if that meant we were staying another night. They responded yes and that we would be moving to ICU, but that was just so that she would get better care. They said in ICU they would be able to monitor her levels more closely and that she would have a better nurse / patient ratio. They called the VAT team in to put in a larger IV in her arm.

We felt secure that she would get more attention in ICU. We could not thank the PCA enough for getting Evelyn the attention that she needed. She was amazing and are so thankful. The sooner they got her levels normal, the sooner we could go home. Everyone thought that by Tuesday afternoon that she could be back in this same room.

My parents came up that night to bring Adam and I some clothes. They were able to see her for just a few minutes in ICU because it was way past visiting hours. We had them bring only one change of clothes because we really thought by morning she would be better.