A Visit to Children's Hospital

About 9, we arrived at Children's Hospital. Courtney and Christian were sleeping in the back and Megan was still awake.

Matt dropped Megan, Christian and I off at the doors so we could get all that lovely paperwork started. Matt joined us later with Courtney after he parked the car.

We got all checked in and waited in the waiting room. Soon we got called back to triage where they weighed Christian again and looked at his bruise. The nurse there mentioned she didn't want to take his blood pressue in case he would bruise again. (We're going on the low platelet theory at this moment). She did his vitals and talked to us a little bit about his spot.

Soon, we got moved back into an ER room. Here, we got the girls settled down to "Pocohontas" and two doctors came in to talk to us. They looked Christian over from head to toe, looked at his bruise, poked it, felt it, thought a little bit, and then said, "First things first, let's get a CBC done and check his platelets." Great! Let's do it!

One doctor left and the other one stayed and talked some more. He said that Christian looked completely healthy, no fever, no purple spots that would signify low platelets or anything.


Then he ordered some tests. CBC, kidney check, and a stomach x-ray. He said he probably has this thing called Henoch-Schoenlein Purpura or Anaphylactoid Purpura. He said it is where the blood vessels in the legs and buttocks bleed, he said it is usually caused by a cold a few weeks earlier. The kids are completely healthy, but their legs look like they got beat up. Christian does have two other spots starting to bruise on the other leg.


He said there is nothing you can do, but wanted to order these tests because there is a slim chance that this can cause kidney failure and a twist in the bowels.


This now about 10 pm and Matt and I are realizing that this could take awhile yet and we need to get the girls home and into bed. Matt called his brother Andrew and they worked out a plan to get the girls home, into bed, and bring me the van back to get Christian home.


Before they even left though, two nurses came in and put a catheter in Christian and drained out some urine. They wanted to make sure there was no blood in it. Then then took some blood out of his arm. Honestly, I thought Christian would scream through these two procedures. He didn't say a peep! Not a flinch, nothing! Great Kid! Even the nurses were impressed!


Next we went down the hall for a stomach x-ray- again, he did excellent!


About 10:30, all the tests were done and we were waiting for results. Christian is getting VERY sleepy, so I put his clothes back in and I settle down in the rocking chair and watch an episode of "The Office." (The hospital had cable!). About 10:45, the dr. sticks his head in and says that Christian's platelets are over 300,000 (minimum is 150,000), so that is great news, his hemoglobin is perfect too. We were waiting on the urine check and the x-ray.

In the meantime, our nurse came back and brought Christian a teddy bear for doing so good at his tests, he just gave her a great big smile. Now Megan AND Christian have teddy bears from Children's Hospital.

A few minutes later, the doctor comes back and says the urine check and x-ray were completely normal too, so that led him to believe that it was a Henoch-Schoenlein Purpura. He said he sees this about 10-12 times a year, he says it is not rare, but the complications from it are. He just said it's the wierdest thing.

About this time, Matt came back to bring me the van keys. I told him we were just waiting on paperwork and we were free to go. Soon the nurse came back in and we signed our discharge papers and we left. She said to watch for abdomen pain or blood in his urine because those are the complications from this, but since they checked them all while we were there, I think we were good to go!

We pulled out of Children's at 11:22 pm. We got home about 11:30 and Andrew headed home himself. Matt went to bed right away and I stayed up and fed Christian and put him to bed. I got to bed about 12:30 am.

Here is another picture of what it looked like this morning.

You can tell it hurts, so I am trying to avoid touching his leg. It doesn't quite say how long it will last, but they said to follow up with our pediatrician in a couple of days. They say to keep to his normal routine and don't do anything different.

Matt and I's thoughts on the whole thing:

1. Next time something happens, we are just going to go to Children's Hospital to start!
2. Why couldn't he have done this 3 weeks ago when it would've been covered 100%??
3. We might as well try to hit our deductible this year because we're probably half way there after last night!
4. It was a good thing we went in, but if we didn't go in, nothing would've changed. The bruise is still there and there is nothing we can do about it.
5. We are so thankful we have family in town who are willing to help us out, even at 10 pm!
6. We are so thankful that it is not life-threatening and Christian is a very healthy young boy!!