Rotavirus

This last weekend we had a BIG scare with Hunter. While we were in Gunnison driving around looking for a place to live, Hunter started screaming and writhing in pain. Then all of the sudden, he threw up...not just a little throw-up. He was covered in sour curdled milk, cookies and whatever else he had eaten. His carseat was a mess, the seat in our car...it was every where. I don't know where it all came from. Anyway, by Saturday Hunter was so weak from throwing up and the diarrhea we decided to take him to the ER. We were told he had Gastroenteritis and gave us some cream from his sore bum and some medicine to help with the vomiting.

By Sunday, Hunter was even more weak. He wouldn't run around the house and play. All he wanted was to lay on my lap. He had no saliva in his mouth. When he cried, he had no tears in his eyes or snot coming out of his nose. So, after Bishop Anderson and Brother Rigby came over to help Zane with a blessing, we took him to the ER again. The ER doctor hooked Hunter up to an IV and gave him some medicine for the vomiting. About an hour later, he came back in and said he talked to the doctor on call for our doctor's office and they both determined he was so dehydrated and what little amount of fluid they had pumped into him wasn't going to rehydrate him, Hunter and I took a little ride in the ambulance from the new hospital to the old hospital where the pediatrics unit is at.

And there we sat and let the doctors and nurses make our baby better! It was determined that Hunter had Rotavirus and a really BAD case of it. The doctor did so many blood tests on my poor little guy, his little arms are so bruised up. But he did remarkably well, even with those horrible IV's that sting and hurt so bad. Hunter was up playing in his hospital room yesterday, climbing on chairs, being him. Our awesome doctor, Dr. Clark came in and told us that because Hunter was having pee diapers and not a lot of diarrhea, and was eating again we could go home! It was a wonderful moment for us!

Our doctor told us that they make a vaccination for Rotavirus that is given at 2 months. My advice to all you moms out there, ask your doctor if your baby was given the Rotavirus vaccination. Trust me, you don't want your baby to get it. It is very scary to watch your baby go through what Zane and I have watched Hunter go through. Here is a description of Rotavirus for those of you who don't know what it is.

Rotavirus is a genus of double-stranded RNA virus in the family Reoviridae. It is the leading cause of severe diarrhoea among infants and young children. By the age of five, nearly every child in the world has been infected with rotavirus at least once. However, with each infection, immunity develops and subsequent infections are less severe. There are seven species of this virus, referred to as A, B, C, D, E, F and G. Rotavirus A, the most common, causes more than 90% of infections in humans.
Rotavirus is transmitted by the faecal-oral route. It infects cells that line the small intestine and produces an enterotoxin, which induces gastroenteritis, leading to severe diarrhoea and sometimes death through dehydration. Although rotavirus was discovered in 1973 and accounts for up to 50% of hospitalisations for severe diarrhoea in infants and children, its importance is still not widely known within the public health community, particularly in developing countries. In addition to its impact on human health, rotavirus also infects animals, and is a pathogen of livestock.
In developing countries, around 611,000 children under five years of age die from rotavirus infection each year, and almost two million more become severely ill. In the United States, rotavirus causes about 2.7 million cases of severe gastroenteritis in children, almost 60,000 hospitalisations, and around 37 deaths each year. Public health campaigns to combat rotavirus focus on providing oral rehydration therapy for infected children and vaccination to prevent the disease. (From Wikipedia)