Viral or Bacterial?

Ok, so Sunday evening (Jan.15) Rob and the kids and I watched National Treasure. Then, after putting the kids to bed Rob and I started watching P.S. I Love You. Not to long into the movie, Rob started complaining of gas pain, so I gave him some medicine. A little later he said he was feeling nauseous. He was ok for a while. I ended up finishing up the movie without him. After I retired to bed, Rob raced to the toilet just in time before vomiting. This continued every 30 minutes for awhile. It got worse from there, but I’ll spare you the specific details. After a couple hours, I put my clothes on and when he came out of the bathroom I told him we needed to get the ER. So he hurriedly got dressed and we jumped in the car barf pot in hand, praying that we’d make it before he got sick again.

Luckily when we got to the ER, they were not busy at all and were able to get our insurance info and into triage, then back to the back to see a doc. They immediately hooked him up to an IV, drew blood, and he also saw the doc. They ended up giving him some anti-nausea, imodium, along with a bag of fluid. These meds proved to be pretty useless. Rob’s regular doc came in and determined since he wouldn’t be able to keep his meds in, if he sent him home that Rob would need to be admitted for at least 24 hours. Rob was on a strict IV diet until late afternoon, when they fianlly let him have Sprite and Jello.

He got settled into his room and I went home to eat and let the kids know what was going on. They were at home for the MLK holiday. I ended up not going into work for the 6 hours that we were open. My neighbors were so sweet to help me out with the kids that afternoon.

That evening when I was back visiting Rob spiked a fever, going from normal temps to over 103 in less than 2 hours. They drew more blood and gave him some Tylenol and a bag of precautionary antibiotic.

The next day (Tuesday) when I showed up, I expected to be bring Rob home, but due to the fever and the fact he was still a bit sick to his stomach, Doc wanted to be cautious and keep Rob another night. He had been eating a very small amount of “Non-Gastric Stimulating” foods. Late that morning, I arranged for the kids to be taken care of by our friends; J & R. They had been by to visit Rob and had offered to help in anyway, so that was one less things for me to worry with. It also allowed me to go to work for a few hours. After work, I went back by the hospital to see Rob and pick up my laptop that I had left so he could use it while I was running errands and at work. After that I went and picked up the boys. J & R even had leftovers for me to Drew’s bedtime is later, so he stayed up with me for a bit.

Wednesday, I got the kids off to school and raced over to the hospital. we had to hang out for a while, waiting on paperwork, and he ended up getting released about 9:40am.

I headed to work that afternoon and came home for dinner as I always do. Our neighbors were so nice to make us dinner and bring it over. Yummy!

So in these 2 1/2 days, we went from thinking it was food poisoning (bacterial) to a virus. Emails had circulated and we came to realize that the training Rob had been to on Saturday, there were about 12 other guys that ended up sick as well. Later in the week some of the wives ended up getting it. The blood cultures came back that it was viral as well.