A Full Day's Work

Well, after 8 hours in the Children's Hospital Boston Emergency Room, a catheter, an iv, four viles of blood, a stool sample, several chest and abdominal x-rays, a urine sample, countless tests ordered and some run, we finally know ---that we still don't know what is wrong with Lennon.  We know some things that it is NOT.  It is not a urinary tract infection.  It is not pneumonia.  There are no problems with his liver or kidney function and his lungs look okay.  He does have an elevated white blood cell count with slightly concerned the ER doc and his salt or something in his urine was a little off of normal, but she didn't seem too concerned with that.  They are running lots of tests and most should be done by the end of the week.  They will only call us if a test comes back positive, so no news is good news.  I guess I should just be relieved at this point unless I get a phone call.  Poor little Lennon was such a trooper.  He just lay there crying on the x-ray table while they took the pictures.  He was probably the most unhappy about the catheter, understandably.  The little dude was so sad, but really didn't struggle much at all.  He was clearly unhappy, but didn't put up much of a fight.  They gave him some fluids half way through the day, but that was about it.  They didn't really have any answers for us at the end of the day either.  Their best guess without any results back is that it "may" be rotavirus, but that usually lasts a few days up to two weeks and this is now moving into it's fourth week tomorrow.  They are checking for all kinds of things such as CF, celiac disease, other metabolic disorders that might cause malabsorbtion of nutrients, food allergies, bacterial infections, and so on.  They said that the extreme stinkiness of the poo was a little indicative of a metabolic disorder, but not necessarily so.  So, we basically are in the same boat information wise as we were this morning.  At least some tests are being run and we should know more by the end of the week.