Jeremiah's Kawasaki Disease Story!

Jeremiah's Kawasaki Disease Story!
This is Jeremiah's KD story told by his wondeful mommy Nancy, you can see Jeremiah's pictures under my albums "Jeremiah's KD album", Please read on for the full story. Thank you Nancy for sharing Jeremiah's story with us! VanessaMy younger son, Jeremiah, (13yrs) had kawasaki disease at age 8 1/2 years(6/04). His first trip to the ER, it was misdiagnosed as pharnyngitis. Second trip to the ER, it was diagnosed as strep throat. Finally, after 8 days of dealing with all the symptoms thus far, his PCP, after telling us we weren't giving the antibiotics for the strep throat enough time to work, agreed to see him so we didn't make another unnecessary trip to the ER. We didn't even get past the front door of the doctors office and she was on the phone admitting him to the local hospital. Many tests were done including a blood draw and urine sample and a massive urinary tract infection was the next diagnosis. So, IV antibiotics were started on day 9, but he of course didn't respond. So, on day 10 after onset of symptoms(he had every single symptom of kd), an infectious disease specialist was called in and kawasaki disease was diagnosed pretty much immediately. Treatment started on day 11 as our local hospital did not have the IVIG available. And for Jeremiah, it was a little too late. The disease already wreaked havoc on his body. Even with treatment of IVIG and massive doses of aspirin, he still sustained damage to his coronary arteries. He has 4 large aneurysms and is on Plavix and aspirin for life. He is never allowed to play contact sports among other things, but other than that is doing quite well.Ok, that is his story, if you would like me to add more details I can. He is followed by Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. My 3 kiddos share the same cardiologist. He has stress tests yearly pretty much and will have a heart cath this coming August to check on things. He did have a change in his personality and is overly sensitive about things, but that has gotten better. I have not noticed any joint issues, but he did hurt his knee playing baseball and it took almost a year to heal. I will say that he continued to play with it hurt per his current PCP but had to ice it immediately following games.