About 12 days after we brought Jaylen home we had a problem. I was changing her and noticed a spot on her side that looked like and infected sore. I was worried but since I had a doctors appointment in a few days I decided to just watch it and see what happens with it. the next morning (maybe 6 hours later) I noticed 3 more spots and got worried. I changed my doctors appointment for later that day and by the time her daddy got home she had 6 all together.
Her doctor said they could be so many things, but all she knows is they are not good. She sent us to the Children's hospital right away and we were seen very quickly once we got there. The doctor we saw said it could be two different things.
A staff Infection
HSV
He said we should hope for the staff infection and they began to run tests.
They first thing they did was try to get an IV in her which proved very difficult. They tried 8 times before being able to finally get one in her arm. It was terrible seeing her like that.
Then they checked her spinal fluid. =[ that was the worst to see.
After that they put us in a room and told us to get comfortable. a few hours later when the next doctor came in and looked at Jay, she had 15 spots all together. The doctor told us they were pretty sure Jaylen has HSV, which is Herpes Virus.
I was shocked.
the told us if the virus was in her spinal fluid we have a big problem and that this could be life threatening.
We got lucky and the virus was only in her body and blood, which still meant a 21 day hospital stay and a bunch of medication for my little trooper. That also mean a more permanite IV since the normal IV only lasts 24 - 48 hours on a baby.
The decided to do a pic-line on her which is an IV that goes all the way into her large veins by her heart. They tried 3 times but couldn't get the Pic-Line to stay with her. They tried 21 IV's on her all together and each one either didnt even work at all or went bad after a day. They said they had no choice but to do a Broviack IV which was surgery.
She went under anesthesia and got the Broviack put in her leg, but it fell out that same night!!
we were so upset and they had to put her under anesthesia AGAIN to re do it.
They put it in her leg both times and both will leave a scar =[
The second one worked though, and the rest of the time she was in the hospital she had that Broviack and no more needle pokes!
A few days before we got out they re tested her blood to see if the HSV virus was still in her blood or not.
She will always have the virus in her body, but luckily the blood was clean which meant we could go home!!
Before we left however, the doctor told us her red blood cell count was very low and almost in the critical area. They told us they would watch it and if her body produced more by the next blood test, she could go home, if not she would need a blood transfusion .
=[
I was so scared. She is only a month old and so much happened to her.
her levels didnt go to much higher but they didn't go down either. that means her body is producing them still and we could go home, as long as we got her blood tested every month to make sure she was still healthy. she will also have to be on medication for 6 months!
Taking her home felt brand new again. I am so thankful to all the doctors and nurses that helped us and even when things got hard or irritating they were always so nice to us. We got lucky and had ourselves a little trooper and I thank god for that.
