day263

Hi there!I hope you all had a great Christmas!Our's was kind of strange to say the very least.
This year I got my shopping done very early and was planning to do some fun baking with my girls during the last week before Christmas.Well I know better than to make plans like that.
The Monday before Christmas I went last minute shopping with my Mom,stepdad and sister and we were out until 12:30 am. When I got home,Jenna was very restless.She didn't sleep very well all night and by 5:30 in the morning Randy had her laying on his chest and we noticed she was shaking uncontrollably.We called UC,immediately and they had us take her into our local ER.By the time we got there her temperature was on the rise.They did a blood culture and gave her some heavy duty antibiotics.Well chills and a fever with a child who has a central line to her heart is not good at all.They got her stable and sent us to UC.We were sent right up to the BMT unit where we spent the next 10 days trying to get rid of her fevers.
6 hours after the Er had drawn blood, the culture showed growth,which is very fast.She had an E-coli infection in her line.They tried to clear it with really strong antibiotics but by the third day the nurse was flushing her line and Jenna got the chills again,so bad that it was like convulsions.So that meant that the infection was still in her line and they needed to remove it.So Thursday morning she went down and had her line out and a pic-line put in her arm so she could recieve the rest of her antibiotics through it.They said that should take care of it.Friday afternoon they decided she was stable enough,she hadn't run any fevers over night so they set up for home heath to come to our house once a day and give the antibiotic through the pic line and they sent us home.Well we were here long enough to do some laundry and Jenna spiked a fever.So they wanted us back.She ran unexplainable fevers up until Christmas Eve.All of her blood cultures except the very first came back negetive so they really didn't understand why she would still have fever.I would be lying if I said we weren't scared to death.She was very miserable.They think she may have picked up a virus on top of everything else.
On the bright side of all this we got a Christmas miracle.She was feeling much better by Christmas and we had my mom bring Lindsay up Christmas eve and we managed to have a pretty nice Christmas.Jenna was a maniac at unwrapping presents,which we knew she would be since we had to put all of the packages up and away from her at home because she started opening mid-december!The hospital also played santa and brought in a ton of stuff in the middle of the night for her,she had a good time.
Mom and Lindsay got there just in time to meet Robin Williams,who was there visiting with all of the sick kids and their families.What a neat person.I guess he does this every year,he brought Jenna a meow-chi and a book he signed for her and took pictures with us all,we loved it,Jenna screamed.
So now we are home and Jenna is doing so much better,Randy and I cannot think of anything we wanted more than that.She no longer has her Broviac or any tubes and holes in her body,just the battle scars that are left, which is great except that when she needs blood draws,they will now have to stick her.-Sigh.

We hope you all have a very safe and happy New Year!
Love,
Kristi,Randy,Lindsay & Jenna