Kawasaki What???

Saturday night after Matthew took a bath he showed me a weird rash he had on his tummy. I didn't think much about it and then Sunday morning he woke up with a fever of 102. Monday, Matthew was still sick and said it hurt to swallow so I took him into the doctor thinking he had strep. When I got to the doctor he said,"Oh this is for sure strep because he has the scarlatina rash and a fever." He even said it was the best strep rash he has seen for a long time so he took pictures of Matthew to put in his book to teach other colleagues what the rash looks like.

Anyway, the doctor took the strep test and was so positive that that's what it was that he sent me down for the medicine before the test came back. Matthew was so sick he laid down in his office while I went to get the meds. When I came back up for Matthew the doctor met me in the hall. The rapid strep test came back negative. He couldn't believe it. He told me to take the medicine home and have Matthew take it anyway and he would call me when the long term test came back in.

So we went home and the next day the doctor calls and says to come back in because the long-term test is negative. Meanwhile Matthew is still not feeling any better and should be because he put him on Keflex which is a really strong antibiotic. So we made an appointment for the next day and went in.

This time the doctor looked him over and the rash was getting worse. He said the only other disease he knew of that came with a high temperature and a scarlatina rash was called kawasaki's disease. They don't know how people get this disease and he said the disease would run its course and the bad part is that in the end it could leave aneurisms on Matthew's heart if it went untreated. Then he went onto explain that the only way to test for the disease is by process of elimination. So we needed to start tests right away since they have to treat by day 9-10. By this time we were on day 4-5. One thing I did not understand during this whole thing is why they just didn't treat him if it could leave aneurisms on the heart. Later I learned that the treatment is a pool of hemoglobin's that they put in Matthew's blood stream. Since it is from so many different people it can cause all sorts of other problems so they don't want to treat him if they don't have to. The doctors don't even know why the treatment works or why on earth someone had the idea to try it out.So this is the course the disease takes leading up to aneurisms on the heart. Scarlatina rash, high fever, liver inflammation, white blood cells and bili in the urine, blood shot eyes, strawberry tongue, enlarged lymph nodes and puffy hands and feet. Each of these things came at different times and then gradually went away.

As we were coming up on Easter weekend my pediatrician was extremely worried because he was pretty sure Matthew had Kawasaki's disease and we needed to treat him but all of the tests hadn't come back yet and the way Kaiser works(our insurance)our doctor had to get approval from another doctor to treat. Well the second doctor wasn't sure if we should treat and thought it would be fine to wait the weekend. So we decided to wait and Andy gave Matthew a blessing and blessed him that his body would be able to heal itself. This had really taken a lot out of Matthew and he was really tired. But this is a picture of him Easter weekend and he was a real trooper. In this picture he just looks pale but really he was pretty yellow.

Monday we went back into see the doctor and Matthew was actually doing better. Since he looked good they decided that instead of immediately treating him they would send him to Dornbecher's Children's hospital to get a echo cardiogram to check for aneurisms. The echo cardiogram came back completely normal! It still took awhile for Matthew to feel completely better and we also had to go back later that month to get his liver levels checked again, which also went back to normal. It was a crazy week and a half but also an amazing one. I'm so grateful for the priesthood and that Matthew was able to get better on his own!