Home at last

Friday night turned out to be an eventful one. Harry had been moaning a bit in the day that the drip in his hand was hurting. The nurse repadded it, and he seemed ok with it. So he went to sleep and we thought nothing more of it. Then the night staff came on and Claire told us the drip was going to have to come out as it had tissued. So by now it is gone midnight and we have to do the emla cream on a few different spots so that we can put a new drip in. Harrys temp is now 39.8 and he is actually not looking too great and complaining of a headache.
The emergency doctor came down to put the canular in (if that is how it is spelt) but got called away so we had to carry on waiting. He returned at 2.30 so the emla has been on 2 and a half hours and we can't find a vein now. He tried the back of harrys hand but that didn't work, so we had to get up and go in the treatment room as there was more light. Then he tried the elbow of the right arm, and after lots of prodding and poking it went in, or so we thought. He couldn't take blood from here, so we should have known that something wasn't right and he had to put more emla on and he came back another hour later to take blood out of his hand. It is now 4.30 and we tried to wake harry but with no luck, however he woke up when the needle went in.

The next day Harry was complaining that this drip was hurting. The antibiotics had gone in for an hour and we said could he wait till they finished? They had a tape round his arm which looked tight so we cut that off and then left it a bit, but he still complained that it hurt. Jo - one of the nurses came over - and asked Harry what his pain score was. Harry said about a 7, and Jo looked at his arm and immediately said 'this drip needs to come out?' Again it had tissued and the antibiotics were just filling up in his arm and going nowhere. She then explained to Harry that some people have a high threshold of pain and go on about it being a good thing, and that Harry really does have a high threshold. She said that most children would have been screaming to get the drip out, and when they finally took it out, the antibiotics just poured out of his arm for the next half an hour or so.

They then decided to move him out of the room as he had started to have a bit of a cough and a sniffle and we got put into isolation. They did another 'snot test', where they put a tube up your nose and suck down what is up there. It took a while as there didn't seem much there, but it came back with a positive result and Harry has the flu! His temp was down by now and they said that we could go home if it stayed down. So it did, until 6pm when it was back up to 38.4. We had a chat with the doctor and as all the cultures were showing nothing apart from the flu there was nothing they could for him. He looked so well, that they decided that we could go home and if it goes high, as in 39 and over we call to see what they want us to do. If he starts to look unwell we also call, but for now we are home.

So hopefully that is the end of our hospital stays. This week we will be at home apart from for physio appts and all the other appts we have. Then next week we have the start of the scans and hearing and heart tests. Then on the 16th March we have the review.

Fingers crossed for all of that and for now we have to concentrate on that walking as we need Harry to be up and about for Club Med Bali.

Have a great week everyone, and please add a commment. We will be going to print soon, so if you want to be remembered in Harrys Journey write something for him to keep. xx