Room #535

Look at those sad, sick eyes. Connor didn't want to wear the 'dress' they gave him; the nurses were sweet and didn't make him.

Poor thing.

Connor and Sadie both had the sniffles last Tuesday night when they went to bed. Wendnesday morning they both had runny noses. Thursday, Sadie's was just a little runny and Connor's was runny, plus a cough. Thursday night I found Connor in the hallway walking to my room around 1am. I recognized his labored breathing immediately since this has been something we've dealt with once a month for the last 4 months. So I took him in his room, gave him tylenol and started up the nebulizer. He finally fell alseep around 4:30am. In the morning he came in and his breathing was really bad so we headed over to the Dr. as usual. I figured we'd get prescriptions for albuterol, a steroid and an antibiotic and be on our way, just as we had the pervious 3 times. This time the front desk told the nurse we had a labored-breathing child and she rushed out and got him, we got to our room and the Dr. was practically waiting for us. They tested his oxygen which was super low. They gave him 2 shots and 2 breathing treatments and said if his oxygen doesn't come up in 20 mins. he is going straight to the hospital. It didn't come up :(.

So we took a little walk over to the hospital. Connor just kept asking to go home. When we got to his room, I was showing him around and told him he had a bathroom in his own room! Then he told me, "well lets go see the swimming pool now!" Sweet thing, he thought he was at a hotel.

At the hospital they set him up with a respiratory specialist who worked with him to get his lungs cleaned out. They did x-rays. They also had to get IVs put in to quickly get steroids and antibiotics through his body. Ryan took Connor the first time to get the IVs in; I could hear him screaming from across the pediatric unit. Ryan said he had to pin him down as they tried his hand first and dug the needle around for 3 minutes and never got anything. Then they dug around in his arm for 3 mintues and never got anything there either. They gave the poor kid a break for about and hour and then tried again. I took him this time and he laid right down on the table, his eyes got really red and watery and kept focused on me and they got it right in! No screaming, no crying and no pinning him down. He even thanked the nurses as we walked out of the treatment room. He stayed in the hospital for 2 days as his oxygen levels came up and his lungs slowly cleared out. Blood test and x-rays came back; he had an ear infection and a lung infection.

He is home now and we are having to keep on a pretty aggressive breathing treatment schedule with some other meds. Next week's plan is to work on getting into a pulmonologist and an allergist to see why he is having these recurring reactive airway problems.

We are glad to have our little buddy home, even if he is really grumpy from all the steroids he's been taking. He still has all the tape and bandaids on him from the hospital; he refuses to let us touch or even uncover them. I guess we will have to wait for the tape to loosen up and fall off. This little kiddo has always hated bandaids! I think I have even dedicated a past post about his loath of bandaids. After this tramatic experience he will probably freak out and refuse to step foot in a doctors office.

P.S. Sadie never got more than a runny nose for 2 days. :)