Thursday, March 5, 2009

keeping it interesting and going out with a bang!

As usual and like many of the kids who wind up inpatient at KKI, Kenzie likes to make a normal day memorable. Kenzie had her snack at 6:30 (sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and banana applesauce - nothing new about them) and then her great friend Miss Patti took her for a ride in the wagon. Patti said she noticed something red on Kenzie's face during the ride and tried to wipe it off but thought it must have been because she vomited during the snack. We put Kenzie to bed around 8 and settled in for our last night here.

At around 915, I noticed Kenzie in a sort of half awake, half asleep state. She was moaning and writhing around uncomfortably. Kenzie is normally a very good and sound sleeper. After a few minutes, I started to pat her back and talk to her. When that didn't work I told Jordan it seemed like something hurt her because of her movements. He noticed that she kept grabbing at her diaper. I did what I always do and climbed into her crib with her so we could "spoon" and she would fall back asleep. Kenzie kept taking my hand and literally throwing it off of her. She did not want Bunnie, her blanket she cant sleep without and wanted nothing to do with me. Now we really knew something was wrong. Because it seemed like she kept grabbing at her crotch, we thought maybe her diaper rash got worse and I told Jordan we should change her diaper. It was pretty dark in the room with just a low dimmer on but when I took off her diaper everything seemed really red. We turned on a light and immediately saw that (and she will kill me for using these terms one day) her labia were filled with hives and all swollen. Jordan turned on a light and we stripped her naked. As it turns out her whole body had hives and a rash. The scariest part was that Kenzie's face, mouth, ears, and neck seemed to get worse every minute. We called for the nurse and told her to page the doctor on call but luckily we keep baby benedryl around and gave her a dose.

With all of Kenzie's allergic type reactions she's had, they have all been digestive and have never been anaphylaxic (sp???). This was actually one of the reasons the team decided to put Kenzie inpatient. They were always afraid something like this might happen. The benedryl worked and luckily we didn't have to give her any shot because her airways stayed open. Within 20 minutes Kenzie was smiling and ready to play! She really is amazing. The doctor decided to switch her overnight feeds to straight pedyialte from formula because he was afraid maybe her batch had been contaminated and the pharmacy wasn't open to make her more. So now we sit and scratch our heads as to what Kenzie ingested that caused such a systemic reaction in her. We know because of her face, mouth, and labia that it was something she ate but we have no idea what. We will make sure this morning that the team downstairs didn't put anything in her foods different but are pretty sure that they would never. If you were to see the kitchen they cook Kenzie's food in, it's pretty amazing and totally sterile. Because they have so many kids with allergies, every kid gets their own station, cooking utensils, blender, etc. Kenzie's station and bin in the fridge are marked everywhere with "high allergy alert" postits. It has always been one of the things I am very impressed by here. They really take kids sensitivities with the utmost caution.

The only thing we can possibly think of is that the sweet potato was a fresh batch of food they just made yesterday. Maybe somehow it had touched something (they puree fresh vegetables for Kenzie)?!? But what... so now we have one more worry with Kenzie and might need to get one of those pen things to carry around because we don't know what caused this. We always said, and I think I was recently talking to my dad about it, that at least with kenzie, if she couldn't tolerate something... shed just poop it out. We didn't have the worry of a full fledged allergic reaction. Now we do.

I finally convinced Jordan to stop checking on her and go back to the hotel at about 11:30. He was sitting there with a flashlight examining her to see if the redness was going down every few minutes. The doctor here told us to give her benedryl every 4 hours all night and watch her. So needless to say, I have been up all night. The good news though is that I should sleep in the car and in less than 12 hours we will be home!!!!! I will make an appt with our immunologist/allergist as soon as I can get in to talk about what happened and see if he can figure out what it might have been but we may never know unless it happens again.

On a really positive note, our nephew Zachary found out he is going to get a baby sister yesterday!!! Tracee and Adam are so so happy! I can't wait to pass down some of Kenzie's dresses and buy her some bows! Congrats :-)

We are leaving here around noon and I sooooo soooo can't wait to get in my bed tonight. I will post pictures of our last few days tomorrow. Right now I'm going to get dressed and pack up! Have a great day :-)

No comments: