Saturday August 10th Brooklyn came down with a virus, the same one my nephew Asante had (a day or two of a fever, followed by a day or two of a sore throat). Saturday was fever day, Sunday was sore throat day, and by Monday she was fine. That entire week she was fine.
Until the following Monday, August 19th. That morning she woke up complaining that her neck hurt and she was hot to the touch. I took her temp and it was 101. I called the advice nurse at her ped's office, and she suggested that I take Brooklyn up to the ER to be checked for possible meningitis (which is the first thing they think of when they hear neck pain and fever), especially since Brooklyn was refusing to move her head at all.
At the ER when going over Brooklyn's symptoms with the doctor and the doctor examining Brooklyn it was concluded that it wasn't meningitis. They did a strep test that came back negative (but they always culture it for 24-48 hours). It was decided that she probably just had a virus and we needed to let it run it's course. So, back home we went to use tylenol and motrin for pain and fever and push fluids.
Tuesday August 20th Brooklyn woke up and her neck was visibly swollen, she couldn't swallow and she was crying. So, I called the advice nurse again, she said I should bring Brooklyn in to be checked out, just to be sure there wasn't something else going on. Brooklyn had an elevated temperature, but not a fever. She saw the doctor, and it was concluded that she COULD have mono (too early to test, but she also didn't have any abdomen pain/discomfort that is present with mono), but most likely she had an infection in her lymph nodes. The doctor prescribe Augmentin (an antibiotic). After I got that filled at the pharmacy I got a call from the ER saying that Brooklyn's strep culture was positive, so she did need antibiotics, they said that the Augmentin would work perfectly for that and that she should be feeling MUCH better within 24 hours of the first dose.
Tuesday she got 2 doses of Augmentin in her, but she was still feeling pretty awful, and she looked terrible. She refused to eat or drink anything, she only peed once in 24 hours, and that night she started vomiting. So, back on the phone with the advice nurse I went. She said Brooklyn was most likely on her way to being dehydrated, and I should take her in for IV fluids. So we headed back to the ER.
At the ER the doctor ordered the start of IV fluids, but she was also concerned with possible mono, so she asked the nurse if she would draw a bit of blood for some lab work before starting the IV fluids. They took the blood, started the IV and Brooklyn and I sat back to wait. After a bit the nurse came in and said Brooklyn's white blood cell count was really high, so the doctor wanted to give Brooklyn a broad spectrum antibiotic. Shortly after that the doctor came in to talk to me. She said Brooklyn's white blood cell count was consistent with a MAJOR infection (much more severe than strep throat). The doctor told me that sometimes people can get an abscess in their throat from strep, so she wanted to do an x-ray of Brooklyn's neck and chest.
We did the x-ray and waited for the results. When we got them, the doctor said that the x-rays did show a rather large mass in Brooklyn's throat, so she wanted to give Brooklyn a steroid which would help with her breathing (it wasn't labored, but she was breathing VERY loudly). She said she also wanted to do a CT scan to be sure if the mass was swelling due to the strep throat or an abscess; but that either way Brooklyn was being transferred to a children's hospital.
The CT scan showed that Brooklyn did have an abscess, and the only way to fix it was surgery to clean it out. We had to be transported via ambulance to the children's hospital, and that wait took 2 hours. It was 5am by the time Brooklyn got loaded onto an ambulance. During the wait Joe got the other kiddos to my parents' house and drove up to the children's hospital to wait for us.
Around 6am we got settled into a room. At 8am the surgeon came in to discuss the possibility of surgery with us. He still had to look at the CT scan, but that most likely they would need to go in through the right side of her neck and drain the abscess, they would have to leave a drainage tube, and they'd have to remove that in 3-4 days. He said the surgery was a bit dangerous due to the fact that 1. there's a main artery in her neck, 2. The infection was VERY close to her spine, and 3. the infection could possibly spread down towards her heard.
At 9am we were informed that they were preparing an operating room for her, and by 9:30 we were down in the pre-op room. We met the head surgeon that would be doing her surgery and he said that he should be able to go down her throat and access the abscess, this would mean no drainage tube and no scar, as well as less recovery. This also meant that the anesthesiologist would have to put her breathing tube up her nose and down her throat to give the surgeon the room he needed to access the abscess.
By 9:55am they started the surgery. Poor Brooklyn was terrified and she cried as they wheeled her away. I cried too. About 30 minutes later the surgeon came out to tell us the surgery was over, she did great. They ended up getting 5ccs of puss (a teaspoon of puss) from the abscess. They also sprayed the area out very well to make sure it was cleaned 100%. About 20 minutes after that I was called back to the post-op recovery room. It was terrible. Brooklyn was very upset, it took me 15 minutes to calm her down, and even then she barely recognized me. Shortly after that we were moved back to her room. She slept for several more hours and woke up sometime around 3pm and said she was hungry. She ate a plate of scrambled eggs and a bunch of grapes. Later on that night she ate about 1/4 of a ham and cream cheese sandwich, some mashed potatoes, and some jello. I slept maybe a total of an hour while in the room. I had been up since about 8 am Tuesday.
Brooklyn had a good night Wednesday night, she slept from about 11:30pm until about 9am when she was woken up by the doctors needing to check her out. That gets us to Thursday. She was doing GREAT, eating, drinking, peeing, etc. So, after lunch (and taking her antibiotic capsule well) we were all set to be released. Brooklyn is taking her regular Ritalin ER and Ritalin (for her ADHD), her regular Clonidine (for sleep), and now some heavy duty antibiotics (for the infection) and some probiotics (to prevent tummy issues related to the antibiotics).
She goes in tomorrow to have a check up with her regular pediatrician, and then she'll be seen again after finishing off her antibiotics just to be sure everything has cleared up and healed well.
She's back to her usual self, running all over with TONS of energy.
I'm going to send a thank you card to the ER doctor. In my opinion, she saved my daughter's life. If she hadn't investigated a bit there's a VERY good chance we'd have gone home and the abscess would have been allowed to spread, potentially reaching Brooklyn's blood stream and/or spinal cord.
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