Hospitalization #3 – Cellulitis

Seriously, Hannah’s body needs a break!

About 2 days ago, Hannah’s day nurse had mentioned upon leaving that evening (7 pm) that her G-tube area was looking a bit red, but it wasn’t warm and it wasn’t really swollen or anything.  Just looked irritated.  She told us to keep an eye on it.  About 90 minutes later, the redness was spreading, it was very warm, swollen, and was getting really hard just to the left of the Mic-Key button.  Daddy and I looked at each other — it was a Saturday night, there was no clinic on Sundays…we had no choice, back to the ER.

We were both concerned about her G-tube being infected, but it turned out that she had cellulitis around the G-tube area.  They did an ultrasound of the area to make sure there was no abscess, and they did the typical bloodwork.  Her white blood cells were elevated at around 15,000, but considering how serious cellulitis could get, this count showed that they caught it very early. 

In the ER room, they gave her a dose of clindamycin.  Because of Hannah’s very recent history with rotavirus and adenovirus/pneumonia, we were told that they wanted to admit her to the hospital just to make sure the antibiotic would work and just to keep an eye on her.  As soon as they said that to us, Daddy and I looked at each other like “are you friggin’ kidding me?”   If it was most any other child, they would have sent them home with antibitiocs because it was in the early stages.  But because it was “Hannah,” they wanted to keep an eye on her.

We got to the ER around 9 pm that night.  Got a room at around 3 am that night.  Got discharged and left the hospital around 1 pm the next day.   She had three doses of the clindamycin, and they really worked great.  Her cellulitis was already significantly improving by that morning, so the attending (the same one we had all three times at Sunrise) said we could spring her out and take care of her at home.

You know when you have been in the hospital too long when the nurse in the ER is the same nurse you had when you were transferred to the PICU from Texas (and remembered us), the night resident was our new pediatrician’s resident whom we had met the day earlier (and remembered us), the charge nurse remembered us, and the attending was the same doctor for all three hospitalizations at Sunrise Children’s hospital.  We haven’t even been in Las Vegas for a month (transferred 6/25), yet Hannah is already getting well known there.

Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully that will be it for a long while!