Day +22: Sleepy Day

 
Last night wasn't too bad. He was a little restless, and woke up around 3:45 a.m., but fell back asleep quickly after a nice rocking. Also, Kal spiked a fever again around 1 a.m. up to 39.1. He kinda held on to that fever until around 4 p.m. today, going up and down in his temperature.

For the majority of the day, Kal was sleeping. He would have moments where he would open his eyes for a minute or two, but then fall right back asleep again. Seriously, he slept alllll day, from last night until around 5 p.m. today. It was so sad to see him just lay there most of the day and just look so terribly exhausted. I guess maybe he was trying to sleep off his fevers. Whenever he would wake up during this long snoozing time, he would be really gumpy and start crying. This just broke my heart, as Kal has been a champ most of the time when it comes to pain, until these past couple of days. He just looks and sounds so pitiful.

Sleepy, sleepy boy...

Another reason why Kal may have slept off the majority of the day was he dropped significantly in his hemoglobin and platelet counts. This can make the heart rate increase (due to needed to pump the lower amount of blood cells around to get enough oxygen) as well as cause fatigue. After he got both platelet and blood transfusions, we expected Kal to perk up quite a bit, as is normal for him to do after a transfusion, but he didn't really do so. This was kind of disappointing.

Around 5 p.m., despite the nurses wanting Kal to sleep a lot to hopefully fight off whatever is causing his fevers, they decided to wake him up and make sure he was doing okay. This is a precaution to make sure he really was capable of staying awake and not just being lethargic. To help him wake up, they decided to give him a bath. He really enjoyed that and just laid there and let them do their sponge bath magic. Haha! After that, they let Kal play in the water of the little pink tub and he was enjoying splashing a lot! He got the nurse pretty wet, but we were all happy he was awake and acting like he was enjoying something. It was super cute!

After that, one of the nurse techs wanted to snuggle with him in her lap. She also tried feeding him some Pedialyte in a bottle, and Kal was chugging that stuff! Too bad once he finished the bottle, he puked it out on her lap. What a stinker boy! Hehe.

Getting some Mama snuggles after he finally woke up!

After that, he was kind of half-awake, half not. I stepped out to grab some dinner, and when I came back, the nurse informed me that it sounded like Kal was having a harder time and working harder to breathe, so she had called the nurse practitioner to come and see Kal. The NP agreed with the nurse, and ordered a nebulizer for Kal to try and open up his airway more and loosen up whatever is in the way of his airway. As of now, it can be given to him every 2 hours, as needed, and will be using just saline water in it.

Sleeping again...

Kal threw up 2 more times after that. There was about an hour that Kal was awake, playing, and very happy. It was like he was back to his old self again for a brief moment! Then, he was tired again and he was off to bed already. Hopefully tonight will be fever-free and he will breathe all right, without the help of the nebulizer.