Garrett's been sick

Last weekend, Garrett had a low grade fever, but seemed all right on Monday. We gave him some Tylenol Cold to help with any congestion. Tuesday, Ben got a call and picked him up from school because he was was telling the nurse and teacher there were frogs and crickets on him. The day only proceeded to get worse at home with hallucinations. Garrett was completely convinced that bugs and frogs were crawling on him and biting him. He was jumpey, shakey and jittery. It brought back some not so fun memories of mine from working at the ER in Albuquerque when drug addicts were brought in who were going through withdrawals. All the doctors could do was strap them down so they wouldn't hurt anyone including themselves. I talked to our doctor here and explained what was going on and we came to the conclusion that the stuff for the congestion had interacted with Garrett's regular medication and caused him these delusions and hallucinations. It was not life threatening and he didn't need to be brought in. Just given lots of fluids to help get both flushed out of his system. I am so thankful that we did not need to take him to the hospital, but could care for him at home and not have him restrained. So Ben and I took turns for a couple days dealing with Garrett's hysteria and making sure he didn't do anything to hurt himself while trying to get the imagined bugs off. We can sit and laugh about it now, but man, watching Garrett go through all that was really heartbreaking especially knowing that he really didn't understand what was happening to him. After that, he had two more days of lethargy and just being out of it. He was physically and emotionally exhausted and very weak. Just staring and not moving. But he wouldn't sleep, just sit or lay there with his eyes wide open, just staring and looking around. We had to guide him through each step of any thing he needed to do like picking up the spoon, putting it in the cereal, etc. etc. When he finally found sleep, he slept for 16 hours! Thankfully, he's doing much better now and is pretty much back to normal. He went back to school today and did okay except for some trouble transitioning from one class to another. He still seems more emotional than usual and gets upset more quickly. I'm hoping that will subside with time. It's been a trying time for all of us. We're glad to have our regular Garrett back.