Just Breathe

So Easter weekend brought with it a series of emotions. The kids had been sick for most of the week prior- but just the usual- runny noses- nothing major. I kept them home from school Tuesday and Wednesday, then Thursday they all went back in the morning because they had a Move-A-Thon which they had been looking forward to for weeks so they went for that and then I kept them home that afternoon- Little Man and Curly had developed a cough and even though it didn't seem too bad- I started Little Man with his puffers and figured he would get past the cold over the weekend. We hadn't- by the way had a problem with Little Man's asthma in almost 2 years- by problem I mean no hospital visits- when he gets a cold we start his puffers and he has been fine - nothing more serious has come of any of his colds no matter how bad they have gotten.... Anyway... By Thursday night I can hear that nasty cough of his getting worse and worse.. And before I know it Little Man is lying in bed beside me moaning and gasping...it all came on so fast... So off we go to the hospital- they take is SATS and he is at 85!!! Bad!!! We don't even wait- we are whisked to a room immediately...

Long story short Little Man is not responding to any treatments- 8 mask treatments, 3 doses of steroids and NO CHANGE. Different Dr's, specialists, respiratory therapists are all coming in and out and no one gets why. we do an X-ray and they discover he has pneumonia in the left lung but still- he should be responding somehow to treatments. This whole time we are in ER by the way, they have him on full oxygen constantly, only to stop it while he is doing his mask treatments. It soon becomes evident we are not going home- The pediatrician- who just so happens to be our pediatrician comes to see him and confirms we will not be going home because his SATS are still too low and that there has been no improvement. Soon we are moved up to the Ped's floor and put in the quarantine room- (I still don't now why- I forgot to ask about that actually) Anyway they tell me straight away that no one else will be in our room and that the bed beside him is for me. I felt so much better- I was so afraid that I would have to go home and leave him here- which of course I wouldn't have done anyway even if it meant I would have stood up leaning against a wall all night. Soon after nurse after nurse and Dr after Dr comes in to see and check and talk- a nurse asks Little Man if he likes the Wii - they bring in a cart with a Wii and 20 games built right into it- Thank god for that- he was so happy-he was like "this is like a hotel!" Which by the way he has never been to a hotel before so I don't know how he would know that.. but anyway I felt better that he felt better. At this point he didn't get that he wasn't going home. Once I told him he broke down and cried- he just wanted to see Curly and Pickle.. it was so sweet/sad. Later that evening Assmeat brought up the other 2 to see him- it was cute- for about 10 minutes and then they all started fighting over the Wii- who was player one- "I don't want to play this game" and the usual sibling stuff..so Little Man settled in for the night and the poor thing- not only did he not sleep the night before either (nor did I ) but now we sure as hell weren't getting any sleep because we had a constant flow of Dr's and nurses checking his vitals, giving him mask treatments- he would just start to fall asleep and someone would come in- then he would get a mask and you can't sleep through that racket- then he would be wired a bit afterwards and watch a little tv- and then the process would start all over again. So we didn't sleep- every once in a a while when I thought he was sleeping I would close my eyes and try to sleep and he would come and crawl into my little tiny non-adjustable cot- and I would bring him back to his bed and re-adjust everything and well what do you know here comes someone else...

Throughout the night the nurses kept telling me his SATS were improving- still on oxygen all the time and doing masks and steroids and added antibiotics for the pneumonia, but things were looking up. So the next day when the nurses came in to give him more meds we were all shocked to see his SATS were down to just as low as they were when we came in- he didn't seem to be struggling to breathe or anything it was weird- they changed machines and everything thinking there must have been a mistake- but no. The pediatrician came in and basically told us there was no way unless something miraculous happened that we would be going home. So there again we get a stream of Dr's and specialists coming and going trying to figure it out- they upped his oxygen and started mask after mask. This went on all day and for some reason, shortly after lunch, they decided to take him off the oxygen and see how he would handle it. He got up to about 94 and stayed there consistently for hours which was awesome and unexpected- after another mask treatment it went even high although shortly after that it came back down- the Dr's concluded that it was the pneumonia in the lung that was making his SATS so low and not the same as it would be if it was just his asthma causing it - so that was good news I guess- it was just a matter of getting the antibiotics into him to get that pneumonia out of his lung- Finally after seeing him not go below 95 the decided he could come home with of course, all the antibiotics and steroids and his puffers to do- but that's ok- we'll take it- so we set off home and as I write this now- he is so much better you would almost never know how bad he was just a couple of days ago- So we celebrated Easter- a day late because you know Mommy had to contact the Easter Bunnies "people" to arrange for him to come a day later because we thought Little Man would still be hospital- no one seemed to mind and I stayed up til the wee hours of the morning writing clues and making de-coders for them to "de-code" the clues and search for their goodies- it went over well- and everyone got a lot of goodies!! I'm so glad my little guy is ok now.. it just goes to show you that you can never tell- you never know when something can go horribly wrong...