Baby Jack's Hospital Adventure

Jack and I had a crazy 24 hours earlier this week.

It all started after a late afternoon nap. Jack woke up and I put him down to play while I finished up dinner. I heard him start making some sad little moans and when I went to check on him he was super hot. We took his temperature and it had gone from normal to almost 103 in about ten minutes. Little guy looked awful and felt awful, he wouldn't even eat.

After a quick call to the doctor we headed to the hospital to get Jack checked out. Of course, this was rush hour in Bangkok and it was just about to rain. I grabbed Jack and a bag (remembered the Kindle, forgot the diapers) and ran to try and get a taxi before the rain started. I found a taxi, but he didn't want to take me all the way to our hospital because of the traffic. I held up the sick Baby Jack and he quickly changed his mind.

The monsoon came almost as soon as we were in the taxi. I was glad I didn't try to get to the train. During the hour (HOUR!) it took us to get to the hospital Jack just moaned and lay in my arms. We had one of Bangkok's most talkative taxi drivers. He told me all about his family and his village. At one point he even pulled out a Buddhism brochure and gave me a lecture on something about good karma and his new taxi car. I really need to study more Thai. Finally he got us close to the hospital and told me I was better off walking in the rain than waiting for the taxi to make it. So, off across six lanes of stopped traffic I went with a burning hot infant. I splashed through some puddles and made it to the children's clinic.

Our doctor had already left, but the doctor on call checked Jack out (high fever, dehydrated), asked how traffic was (awful) and decided that it would be best if we just spent the night at the hospital to make sure Jack didn't have any of those weird mosquito/tropical illnesses. I absolutely love our hospital. As soon as the doctor said we were staying 4 nurses and a customer service lady popped in the room. They gave Jack a sponge bath, some more tylenol and had him admitted before I had time to dig my phone out of my bag and call Roger. Ten minutes later we were up in our room with an IV started and blood drawn.

Jack perked back up after about an hour of fluids and finally started eating again. The test results came back a little later and showed that Jack had some kind of infection, so they started some antibiotics. After a long night of watching his fever go down I woke up to see my happy Baby Jack looking a little more lively. The doctor came by and said he thought he would be just fine, but he wanted us to stay the rest of the day so Jack could get another dose of his antibiotics. Jack slept almost all day and by the time the doctor came by to discharge us he was pretty much back to normal.

Here are some pictures of my sweet boy that I took while we were hanging out at the hospital.

Awake one minute.

Asleep the next.