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Well for some of you this will be the first news you've received on Katie Jo's hospitalization so here's a little background.
Friday I took Katie Jo into the doctor for a suspected UTI. While there the doctor and I looked a few spots she had behind her ear, a scratch on her forehead and maybe a spot on her neck. The doctor determined the spots to be eczema with maybe a little infection since the marks were red. Her urine was tested with a negative UTI result. She prescribed an antibacterial cream for the marks and we were on our way. Late Friday KJ didn't seem herself but we'd had a hard time with the doctor's office so that wasn't out of the ordinary. I also noticed she had an additional spot come up on the bridge of her nose. Saturday morning we went out to her soccer game and she didn't participate but played around on the sidelines. I chalked it up to the discomfort she had with the urinary situation and didn't think much more of it. So, as the day played on she started to have more and more spots come up out of no where. The only way to explain it is it looked like when you sunburn, then peel. She had very thin layers of skin peeling off in spots around her neck and face. Unlike the sunburn peel these were very painful with raw skin exposed. We took her to an urgent care doctor's office Saturday afternoon and the nurse immediately got the doctor who immediately came in and said she looked to have a rare staph infection known as scalded skin syndrome. She said we would be sent to MUSC where they would probably admit her. I'm on the other side of all this now so it's not such a big deal but at the time I had a little panic attack. Hospital? Admit? Stay? She's only three! So with that we started making phone calls. Our good friends in the neighborhood came to get Georgia immediately and we were off to the hospital after gathering up a few necessities. Thankfully we arrived at the Peds ER with only two others ahead of us and we taken back within 30 minutes. After checking in with the nurses and getting her vitals we were sent back to a room. There they did the necessary work up and we were seen by nurses, students, residents, and a real live doctor. After all this they confirmed what the urgent care doctor had diagnosed earlier, Scalded Skin Syndrome. It is a type of staph infection where toxins come back through the skin in the form of peeling skin. It only effects children five and under. So we were told we'd need to prepare to stay in the hospital for a few days. And then we were sent to our room. During this time my parents drove down and have been here ever since to care for Georgia.
So that was Saturday night and here we are on Tuesday and we're home after a three day stay at MUSC. It was quite the ordeal and Katie Jo is no worse for the wear. She was a major trooper. She probably ended up with 30 something lesions on her back, stomach, torso, neck and face. Yes it is as bad as it sounds but she handled the pain very well. She was treated with IV antibiotics and we could see the healing within 24 hours as her lesions began to scab. She was quite the site in her room climbing very gingerly from the bed to a chair to the floor to go to the bathroom, all the while insisting that no one help or touch her! :)
To answer some questions:No she is not a danger to Georgia nor is there a chance Georgia could catch this No we do not know how she got it. We all carry staph on our skin and there is no way to know if she picked it up through preschool, the environment, an animal, or sitting in the sand on the playground.No she is not able to pass this to anyone. You'd first have to touch an open lesion on her body and then touch an open sore on your own and even then the chances are slim. Good luck touching anything that hurts on her body since she'd probably have you in a full nelson press.
I want to say that if you've gotta have a sick kid then MUSC is your place. The care was phenomenal. We had amazing doctors, nurses, and staff that met our needs. I will have to say as for the Children's Hospital they are more concerned with accommodating the child than their own schedule or needs and this was apparent through many situations where patience was needed with my child's particular situation. Most of the caregivers we encountered had never seen a case of scalded skin syndrome or only one so we were very comforted by the amount of information they provided considering it's a rare infection.
God is good and he placed several key people in our path that were connected to us, a neighbor, or a friend and that certainly put things on a more personal level.
We prayed for full healing and it seems we're almost there. We would continue to ask for specific prayer in the case of administering KJ's antibiotics now that we're home. She is very adamant that she will not take them and we are adamant that she has to in order to completely recover. I'll spare the details of how it is accomplished but no one really wins in the end. I pray tomorrow will be a clean slate and she will have courage to take the medicine on her own.
Thank you for all the prayers, call, and well wishes. For those of you that are local please know we appreciate the concern so much but would ask for no visitors at this time. Katie Jo needs time to heal privately and as soon as she's there we'll be back to soccer, preschool, church, and all other activities we'll be missing. We can't stress how much the outpouring of support has meant. It gave me great pleasure to read all the encouraging emails or listen to the messages on the machine when I got home. We knew Katie Jo was being lifted up in prayer and that alone gave us great comfort.
Throughout these past three days the verse that kept coming to mind was Romans 5:3-5 "We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." What a great way to be reminded that nothing that happens is meaningless and we have God's love no matter what trial we face.