FREEDOM---finally!

Well, we got home on Saturday night.  The doctors finally diagnosed Dakota with Kawasaki's disease after testing him for everything under the stars.  As soon as they made the diagnosis, they started him with a 12 hour IV treatment of Immunoglobulin which is made from around 20,000 blood donations.  Specific antibodies are taken from the blood and processed and packed together.  10 grams of this stuff (which is a child's dosage) costs approx $3000 dollars.  Thank heavens for insurance.  Well, he tolerated the treatment ok.  He got a fever during the treatment (which isn't too uncommon), so the next day, his doctor wanted us to wait another day to make sure everything was ok.  So, that night he got another 103.7 fever.  So the next morning, we ran more tests... waited another day.  Dakota had no fevers for 24 hours so they released us with the instructions to watch him and return if any of his symptoms return.  He is on Aspirin therapy which requires weekly blood draws until his lab tests return to normal.  He also has regular echocardiograms that we'll have to follow up with down at Primary's.  He still isn't himself, and he still looks sickly.... but his is looking and acting better than he was.  So, we're hopeful that the worst is over and we can now return to normal life.