Kaitlyn Popejoy
The evening of February 11, 2008, our 5 ½ month old baby girl Kaitlyn was very irritable, not drinking her bottle, and she was uncontrollably crying. We noticed she felt warm, took her temperature and it was around 100 degrees. We gave her some fever reducer and kept trying to calm her down. Her dad took her for a ride in the car, sometimes that would help her get to sleep, but nothing would work. We decided to call her pediatrician at home to get help. He advised us to continue with the fever reducer and see him in the morning if it didn’t break.
After a long night of every couple of hours alternating Tylenol and Motrin, Kaitlyn’s fever still wouldn’t break and had actually gotten higher. We called the doctor and got her in that morning. He looked at her and there was no signs of any infection or illness. He stated it was probably just teething and to give it another 24 hours and if she wasn’t better, to bring her back to the office the next day.
We never made it back to his office. Later that evening after the doctor’s visit, while getting her ready for bed, I noticed her body temperature drastically rise. It went from 100 degrees to 106 within 5 to 10 minutes. She turned very pale and went completely unresponsive. Her eyes were open but there was nothing there. She didn’t react when I clapped my hands next to her face, and she just laid there. I yelled for my husband to come in her room. He couldn’t get a response either. We knew we had to take her to the emergency room. All the way there, she didn’t respond to anything we tried to do.
We arrived at the E.R. and went into the triage area where they did an examination on her and told us that she had a febrile seizure. The doctor on call came in and looked at her and ordered a CBC to check her white blood count. It was extremely high. No signs on any infection though.
They would try to get her blood drawn to do cultures to see if any bacteria would grow, but none of the nurses were able to find a vein on her. They would try again later, since they were going to admit her for the night. The hospital had a policy that if an infant presented with a febrile seizure, they would automatically be admitted for observation.
Throughout the night her fever kept going back and forth but never got back under 100 degrees. The nurses kept coming in to draw her blood, but they still could not obtain a sample. The only treatment she was being given was the Tylenol and Motrin regimen that we had been doing at home, and they told us to only keep her in a diaper to keep her body heat down.
The pediatrician on call, Dr. M came in around noon to do his rounds and he was quite concerned that the blood hadn’t been drawn yet. Because we were losing time in finding out what was causing her fever, he just took the syringe and drew it from a vein in her head and gave her a general antibiotic shot to try to stop whatever was wrong.
Fifteen minutes later our whole world became a blur. My husband was holding her in his arms, rocking her in the chair, and she got so hot in his arms that her skin was burning his arm. Her arms and legs turned purple and he called out to the nurse for help. She came in and looked at our baby girl and said she was probably just upset about having the shot and to not worry. I had been downstairs in the gift shop with our older daughter and when we came in, he said something was wrong. I ran out of the room and yelled for help. That time a different nurse came in, took her temperature, and asked for them to page the doctor stat to her room.
About 8 different hospital workers were surrounding my husband holding our daughter and then the doctor came in, grabbed her and ran across the hall and took her behind closed doors. We have no idea what happened behind those doors, all we could do was wait, pray and cry. It seemed like an eternity passed while we could just hear our daughter screaming and crying. We were not allowed in.
At that time, the pastor who had married us was doing his clergy rounds at the hospital and he came by and prayed for her with us. The doctor came out and told us that they had done a spinal tap on her and pretty much ruled out meningitis because the liquid was clear. They also put an IV in her head and she was now on oxygen. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing. He then stated she had went septic and that was why her limbs turned purple. He said her body was shutting down. She had endotoxic shock.
They said we could go see her. I walked into the room and saw all these tubes sticking out of my baby girl. She was finally quiet. I just picked her up and held her. There was blood on the table where she was lying, I’m assuming from the spinal tap. We took her back to her room and I just held her and cried. Her color was better, but she was very swollen now, because they pumped so much saline in her body. Dr. M said all we could do now was monitor her and wait for the blood test results, which would be in sometime the next morning. The night nurse told us that normally the nurses would gather information about their child’s illnesses to help them better understand what was going on, but they could not give us anything as there was nothing good to tell us.
The morning of February 14th, the test results were in. She had an e coli infection in her urine and her blood. She had x-rays and an ultrasound of her kidneys to rule out any damage and there was none. The course of treatment was several more antibiotic shots,and that she could be discharged as soon as she was 24 hours without fever. She was discharged two days later.
Today, she is a healthy, vibrant, beautiful 5-year-old. And we are so very blessed to have our angel baby.
Source: by Jill Popejoy (Kaitlyn's mother)
