Sunday, September 27, 2009

Our first visit to the Peds ER

We have had a pretty eventful weekend. We spent Friday night in the Pediatric ER. It was pretty scary! Ethan began wheezing Thursday night. When I took him to daycare on Friday, I told not only his teacher, but the director too, to watch him closely and to let me know if it gets bad. Nick went to go pick him up at the end of the day and immediately noticed his breathing. He asked the teacher if Ethan had been breathing like that all day and she said "Yea, what's wrong with him?" Well, Nick brought him home, fed him and was getting him ready for bed and called me a few times in between worried about his breathing. When I got home it was plain to see why Nick was so worried! Ethan sounded like a rattle/baby seal. He couldn't get a good breath and was breathing really fast b/c of it. We immediately loaded him up and took him in.
We had a pretty good experience for the Peds ER. From all the bad stuff I hear, it wasn't too shabby. They got us in and back there within about 10 minutes, saw the MD within 30 minutes and then the respiratory therapist within the next 30 minutes. From then on we were getting treatment. After his first breathing treatment, he went to sleep. Nick and I were just staring at him making sure he was breathing! It was so hard for him to breath. His couldn't get any air and his saturation's went down into the 70s/80s. When he started to retract, Nick immediately called the RN back in there, then the MD came back. That was very scary! He was breathing so hard his chest was forming an indention; a cup shape. He was struggling so hard! Then came the continuous breathing treatment, which really helped! His saturation's went back up to the upper 90s/100. A feeling of relief!!!


Final diagnosis: Influenza A (Swine Flu) and the Croup


10 hours, 4 breathing treatments, 2 medications, 1 IV, and kicking and screaming later; they admitted us for observation. Ethan did pretty good. We finally got some rest...and food. About lunch time on Saturday Ethan began moving around. Jumping all over the 19 chairs they had in that tiny room, talking laughing. My mom was able to come up from AU and relieve us for some time. We all took another nap and waited for AL vs. AK game to be over. Once it was, we were just pacing waiting on the MD to come back through. The covering MD is an AK fan so we knew what he was doing while we were pacing! Finally, the MD came back and discharged us home about 8 Saturday night.

Ethan is doing good today (Sunday). Breathing pretty good, excellent compared to Friday! Playing a bit more, even went outside to play for a short time. Fought a low grade fever. Now he's in bed. Hopefully he will continue to get better day by day!


A big thanks to the Man upstairs for watching out for our little man!!!

2 comments:

Tabitha said...

OMG,that poor baby boy!! That sounds terribly scary, glad to hear he's doing better now. Thinking of ya'll.

Mom said...

It was a scary situation. So glad he's doing better. In spite of it all, I loved being able to help you with him. He's a dear, sweet little boy.