So, we ended up back in the ER this afternoon.

After Aidan woke up this morning, it seemed like we were changing dirty diapers faster than a chain smoker lights up new cancer sticks. He was much more dehydrated than he was last night: his lips were chapped, his eyes sunken, his hands dry, and his breath had that scary ketone smell. So we immediately tried to get liquids into him. Aidan had other ideas and fought us tooth and nail. To the point that even squirting juice/water/Gatorade into his mouth resulted in him spitting it out and even gagging himself enough to cause himself to vomit. We threatened him with going back to the hospital, and after two hours of not getting much into him we made the decision to go.

So, back to Children’s. We arrived around noon and did the whole wait, triage, wait, assess, wait, release thing. 3 hours again. Not much direct help from the nurses and doctor but we managed to get more fluids into him while at the hospital, and the doctor gave us reassurance that we managed to bring him up to a hydration level that he wasn’t in danger (when we brought him in, it was a different story). Part of the concern was that he hadn’t peed for over 24 hours, and the doctor indicated that we weren’t going to leave until he did. And, wouldn’t you know it: a half-hour later he did.

Mind you getting fluids into him means force feeding him. Restraining all his limbs, holding his head back with one hand, forcing his jaw open with the other (while forming a bit of a dam with the webbing of my thumb so that as he spits the liquid out, it pools and goes back into his mouth). Gwen then uses a syringe to put 10 ml of fluid into his mouth. Every 5 minutes. No fun for anyone.

He’s been better this afternoon. We managed to get more fluids into him and then put him down for a nap. He slept 4pm to 7:30pm. After the nap, we pretty much set him up in front of the tube (what would we do without our MythTV box?!?) and tried again to coax fluids into him. We got to the point where he was asking for milk (but refusing everything else). Milk is his comfort food. The doctor had warned us that due to the virus he’d be pretty lactose intolerant for the next week and so no milk. So what to do? Back out to the grocery store (3rd visit in 24 hours: gatorade last night, Popsicles this afternoon) and picked up some lactose-free milk. He downed a bit more than 100ml of the bottle in about 5 minutes and stopped himself. We all waited in anticipation … and waited … and it stayed down.

Not too much longer he asked to go to bed. Not a problem. So, back to bed and asleep by 8:45 pm, with a little bit of a top-off with the ‘milk’. 9:30 pm now, and he’s asleep and hopefully he stays vomit and diarrhoea free all night long.

Now we have tonnes of laundry to do — we were down to summer time pyjamas for him (T’s, shorts, and a size too small). And sweet glorious sleep.