The big guns are antibiotics not antiaircraft. This is hospital night five that started Monday night due to dehydration. Caden starting having fevers above 103 in the early AM Wednesday. Today the fever showed up in the early evening. He has had enough fevers along with some noise (coarseness not wheezing) in his lungs to justify some high powered IV antibiotics. He was stated on vancomycon and rocephin tonight. The doctors ordered a chest xray that did show some areas in both lungs.  They also ordered a second round of blood cultures. The ones pulled on Wednesday morning after the first fever have not grown anything. None of the stool samples have grown anything either. That all means that Caden does not show signs of an identifiable bacterial infection.
As for the dehydration and diarrhea we pushed for a change in the course of treatment today. The doctors were as puzzled as us and seemed to welcome our idea even though it does not fit with recent studies. Basically we took Caden off all tube feeds for the day including his normal hydration (water boluses). Sherry and I felt like it was time to give Caden a try on the same path taken by JJ, Riley and me. That was to go for a day without eating anything and then begin slowly reintroducing foods. Since the IV fluids are running fine the docs agreed even though recent research shows that we should actually be trying to get back on a normal diet as soon as possible after diarrehea. Who would have thunk it? I thought you were supposed to do the BRAT diet for a few days but evidently that is an old school and out of date. It still worked for me last week and I am not about to try and fix a process in my house that ain’t broke.
So the bottom line is that we are running the fever/lung issues separate from the stomach thing. There does not seem to be any reason to think that they are related except the fact that the same kid has both issues at the same time.
All is well otherwise. We got some help caring for Riley and JJ from our oh so gracious friend Mrs Young today. Yes, the same Mrs Young who has five of her own children with number six due in January. Read about their fun life adventures over at The Young Family blog. What I really want to hear more about is the trip she took to the store with ALL SEVEN KIDS today. That included two (2) two-year-olds. Now being seven months pregnant with seven kids in tow, you can only imagine how many strange looks probably she got today. Most people would need some ibuprofen just to think about that adventure but Mrs Young is no rookie and she has some of the best mannered little ones you will ever meet. Thanks Julie!!!