Dean Update...

Here's Dean, all naked and streaking and feeling much better! (Although, I am pretty sure he thinks anyday is a great day if he can be naked!)

Monday evening Dean's Temperature reached an all-time high of 107 degrees. Of course we freaked out since only a few days prior, when his fever was around 105 degrees, a nurse told us that 108 is the breaking point. She said, "105 is a high fever but you are still in the safe zone. After 108, however, there is no life". Since we were so close to that, I was mortified - according to the nurse, Dean was one degree away from death! We were advised to take him immediately to Texas Children's Hospital but before we left Devin took a luke-warm shower with him to try to bring the fever down just enough to get us safely to our destination (about a 40-minute drive). The reason we did this first is because we've heard E.R. horror stories lately and were worried that we would have to wait a while so we wanted to take our own precautions to get the fever manageable before we were stranded in an emergency room lobby. (I found out later that he would have been a priority, but what's a worried mommy to do? I just didn't want that fever to build another 40 minutes on the drive to reach 108!) When we arrived to the hospital I noticed Dean was babbling and goofing around in his carseat so we decided to take his temperature before going in. It was 102. Now what? We know from past experience that a 102 temperature is not a priority as it is considered only a low-grade fever. We decided to hang out in the hospital area for a while to make sure it didn't go back up...it didn't. We went home around 10pm. The next day when I took Dean to the doctor for another appointment he had scheduled, his doctor had heard of the 107 fever and was waiting for our arrival. He did many more tests to check liver and kidney functions, blood infections, Hepatitis and even viral profiles and cultures. Dean's liver and kidneys (and heart, by the way) are all great but his blood count was slightly elevated which indicates either infection or virus (won't know for sure until next week). He hasn't had a fever over 102 since Tuesday so we think the worst of this 11-day high-fever ailment is gone. Most likely scenerio is that his body was attacked by a strange virus but doctors have all agreed that they have not seen a virus that bad (or fevers that high) in a long time, if ever. I'm just glad that the fevers are gone and cannot wait to find out the last of the test results next week.