Sniffles and Sneezes

Gilead began to show slight cold symptoms on Friday. On Sunday morning we noticed he seemed to be struggling to breath, so we took him to an urgent care clinic near us (our doctor's advice - he thought a little oxygen and a nebulizer treatment might be all he needed), but the doctor there called an ambulance right away. He was admitted into Children's Hospital on Sunday evening, after being observed in the emergency room for several hours. Monday morning, he was moved to PICU since he was not responding to breathing treatments. One nurse mentioned something about collapsing lungs, but another nurse stated it as "somewhat deflated" due to not being able to breath deeply. I'm still not sure how to interpret all of that. Anyway, he stayed in PICU until Wednesday afternoon when he turned a corner, and rather suddenly began doing much better. His oxygen levels kept dropping into the 70's, so he was kept at Children's until he could hold his own oxygen levels up. That happened Thursday night for the first time - he didn't need oxygen all night. He was very much improved in every other way, and was getting very, very tired of being confined to a crib or my lap. He crawls now, and he was very upset at being "tied up". Friday morning he was released, and we were glad to drive home, even in the slushy, slippery snow we just got.

Several folks have asked about RSV. Two cultures were done looking for that virus, but that and all the other cultures that were done came back negative. So we don’t know what virus caused this, but the treatment would have been the same for any virus, so that wasn’t an essential piece of information.

I just want to say here how much we appreciated Children’s Hospital. The nurses were very gentle and made me feel like they enjoyed Gilead’s sweet moments and hurt for his painful ones. He had to have an IV inserted into his neck since his arm veins kept blowing - and because he has such nice rolls of fat his veins were hard to find. (I’m very proud of his roly-polyness.) Anyway, in spite of the Gilead’s great discomfort and anger during all of this, they treated him so gently and kindly. I thought a couple of the hospital staff there were going to cry too. A nurse from his first evening in the emergency room saw me later and told me she had been keeping up with his progress, even though she wasn’t assigned to him. That made me feel very good.

Having a nine-month-old in the hospital is quite a job. Gilead would not tolerate his nasal cannula, and kept pulling it out and sticking it in his mouth. Multiple times, he pulled off his leads (the little electrode things stuck to his chest that monitored his vital signs), and stuck them in his mouth. He pulled his pulse-oxygen monitor off his toe, and chewed on it. He found the end of his IV port and chewed that. He could be depended on to grab the nurse’s stethoscope and put it in his mouth too. It was even written in his charts that he put everything in his mouth. I guess not all babies do that?

We are so glad to be home. We’re all sleeping better and hope to be done with all this drama for awhile. I am looking forward to a quite, calm week of home schooling and home cleaning. (Boy, does this home need it! A week of being away has taken its toll.)