Forewarning - this post is long... sorry!
As many of you know, Cooper was very sick for almost a solid month back at the end of April through the middle of May. It started out as what Andy and I chalked up to be a normal stomach virus on April 19th. We were at a playground that night, and he told us his belly hurt. We didn't think much of it, so we just put him to bed like normal that night when we got home. He woke up in the middle of the night with diarrhea and vomiting, so we didn't send him to school. He was sick some more on that Wednesday, so we kept him out of school again on Thursday, then sent him back on Friday. He complained all weekend that he had a bellyache, and was pretty puny, but didn't have any vomiting or diarrhea until Sunday evening.
We really thought he was on the tail end of the virus, so we sent him to school on Monday. He was home sick by 10am that morning (and had been very sick in the middle of the night at slept through it), so I took him to our pediatrician, Dr. Meredith. He did an exam, said everything looked fine, and he chalked it up to a stomach virus that had been going around. That's what we figured was going on, but we wanted to be sure. He told us if his symptoms weren't gone by Wednesday though we would need to bring in a stool sample. Well, he wasn't better by Wednesday, so we took in a stool sample and saw Dr. Smith. He once again chalked it up to a long lasting virus, but sent his stool sample to be tested. Cooper didn't recover enough any that week to go back to school, so he stayed home that whole week.
That Friday (4/29) marked 10 days of being sick, and everything that was tested in his stool sample came back negative. Once again, they said it was probably just a long lasting virus, but to let them know if he wasn't better by the next Monday. He did okay over the weekend, but was really sick again that Monday. I called the doctor again, and we were told to start a probiotic and antacid. We sent him to school that week because he couldn't just keep missing, but he'd get sick at school as well. For the most part, the diarrhea would happen all day, and the vomiting would happen only during the middle of the night, waking him up from a deep sleep. Once he'd vomit in the middle of the night, it was usually followed by diarrhea. It was the weirdest thing, and it wasn't really following any pattern or happening after he ate certain foods.
At this point I was starting to get worried because nothing was helping. I had already read a million things online of what it could possibly be, but it was rare to find something, other than a virus, that caused diarrhea and vomiting. We kept him off milk and dairy, but nothing was helping. By that Thursday he was so sick I was ready to take him to the ER in hopes that they would run tests to figure out what was going on, but I ended up taking him back to Dr. Meredith (for his 3rd visit) on Friday 5/6.
He ran a ton of tests that day to check all kinds of things, but everything came back fine. At this point I was desperately hoping something would show up in his blood work, but nothing gave us any answers. I asked Dr. Meredith if we were looking at anything life threatening (I tend to imagine the worst in every situation, so I was terrified it was some odd form of cancer or something), but he said the worst thing we could be looking at was a chronic stomach issue along the lines of Crohn's or something similar. We ended up taking in another stool sample later that day, but those take forever to come back. If it came back clear, our next step was taking Cooper to a GI specialist. Cooper wasn't dehydrated that day, so went home and just waited.
The next day, Saturday, his symptoms held on strong, and he was extremely puny and tired. We went downtown that evening to eat and walk around, and he had to be carried everywhere. At this point he looked and felt so skinny that it was becoming alarming. We went to a playground and he didn't even attempt to play... he just begged us to go home. We knew he must be feeling pretty bad to not want to play, so we were getting pretty concerned at this point.
He was up and down through the night/morning on Mother's Day, and when he woke up for good that morning, he was so lethargic that it scared Andy and I to death. His eyes were sunken in, we could see all kinds of bones poking out, he couldn't hold his head up, couldn't sit or stand to be dressed, and he had to be carried everywhere. We immediately decided to take him to the ER, and both of us cried the whole way there because we had never seen him so sick. Once we got there they immediately said he was dehydrated, so he was hooked up to an IV on the spot. Once he got some fluids in him he perked up a bit, but he was still actively sick while we were in the ER. They ran the same blood work that Dr. Meredith did on Friday, but everything was fine. They did a stomach x-ray, but that was fine as well. They pretty much ruled out a virus due to the longevity, so we basically had no answers. The ER doctor said his symptoms were very similar to those that come with a parasite called giardia, but that hadn't shown up in his previous stool sample. We were sent home after 5 or 6 hours and were terrified he'd just end up dehydrated again.
He remained sick that evening, but seemed to have a little better of a day on Monday. We kept him home from school to help him recover from the dehydration, but he was actually drawing and playing with some toys. That was a huge improvement over what we had been seeing out of him. He hadn't wanted to play with Clark, his cousins, his toys, or outside in days, so that was a big indication of how badly he was feeling. I researched the parasite the ER doctor told us about, and Cooper had every symptom, but it wasn't showing up in anything. Dr. Meredith called us that morning and said the stool sample from Friday still wasn't back, but that he was setting up an appointment with a GI specialist to get a better look at what was going on. Later that day we found out that our consultation visit with the GI wouldn't be until that Friday, and I was extremely upset since Cooper was so sick. I wanted him seen immediately.
On Tuesday (5/10) Andy and I were determined to send him to school. I was going to let him sleep until he woke up on his own, then take him in. When he woke up he immediately threw up and had diarrhea, but I was hoping it would pass quickly. Well, it didn't. It just got worse, and he was screaming in pain with his stomach. He was also becoming very lethargic again and looked terrible. I called the doctor to see if the stool sample was back. It was, and everything came back normal again. At that point I started crying hysterically with the nurse, told him how sick he was again, and she told me to bring him in immediately for an emergency visit.
I'll pick back up with Part 2 soon - it's lengthy as well! Here are some pictures of Coop before he was admitted to the hospital, and a little timeline of what was going on. I kept one to go over everything with all the doctors we saw.
