Update on Jacob (What has happened until Sun 10/11)

Hi everyone,

We're using this blog as a way of keeping everyone up to date without having to contact everyone directly. Here is what has being going on.

Last Sunday, Jacob started complaining about stomach pain. On Monday, he developed a high fever. During a visit to the doctor, they spotted a bull's eye that is an indicator of Lyme disease which they started treating him for with Amoxicillin. Things didn't get better on Tuesday and on Wednesday morning, we bypassed our local hospital and went straight to CHOP. This is where two years ago this week, Jake was treated for Kawasaki Disease.

Along with blood tests, a CT scan was taken to see his what was causing the pain in his stomach. What they found was an inflammation of his descending colon. There were many things that could be causing that which needed to be eliminated. Since then we have been visited by the GI, Infectious Disease, and rheumetology teams to identify the problem. His fever has been kept under control with Tylenol but at the end of the 4 hours it shoots back up. Yesterday he developed a rash was has taken many different forms and has traveled up and down his body. He also has swelling in his feet and hands, swollen glands in his neck, bloodshot eyes, and dry cracked lips.

They've been able to eliminate the food borne illnesses (e.coli, salomella, etc), pretty sure its not tick borne (Lyme and others), and most viruses (parvo, roto, mono, etc.). His organs all seem to be functioning properly.

A lot of these symptoms are the same as the ones he had when he was here 2 years ago for Kawasaki. At that time, he was diagnosed with ATYPICAL Kawasaki (KD) which mostly means that he did not present with all of the symptoms they would expect to see. At that time, the treatment worked. Now one of the things we are looking at is that this is a possible recurrence of KD or that the diagnosis last time was not completely correct. This is something that the rheumetology team is exploring along with other vascular diseases.

In addition to rheumotology, we are also going to consult with cardiology tonight. Tomorrow he will have an echocardiogram. A lot of the bloodwork that they did today and will finish taking tomorrow will take 3-4 days to get results.

It is likely that Jake will be here for much of the week as we continue to explore what is going on. So far, Jake has ups and downs attitude-wise which mostly corresponds with his fever cycle. While his vitals are taken regularly, he is not hooked up to monitors or in a critical care area. Since they have not come to a diagnosis, he has to stay in his room, so he is mostly lying around catching up on his TV and playing board games. We do feel that we are in the best place and have an amazing group of pediatric specialists at our disposal.