Hospitalized

This has certainly been a long week.

This past weekend, our baby started developing cold symptoms.  He was fussier than he's ever been for two days, and his breathing sounded awful.  We took him to the pediatrician on Monday and they told us it was a viral cold, and there was nothing they could do about it.

We called three times on Tuesday, as his symptoms were getting worse.  The nurses who answered the phone kept assuring us that we were doing everything we could.

He hardly slept Sunday night.  Between the coughing and the crying, he slept for three or four stretches of less than an hour each.  Monday night was much the same.  Tuesday night, I'm not sure he slept at all.  He was struggling to breath all night, and constantly making this low cry noise that Megan was calling a "comfort" noise, but we learned later was him struggling to breathe.

I was also sick on Monday, so I didn't go in to work.  Megan decided to stay home to take care of the baby since I was sick and thus not going to be able to take care of a sick baby alone.  The daycare prefers not to have us drop our sick child with them, and, honestly, they're not really equipped to give a sick baby the kind of attention that a sick baby needs, so Megan also stayed home on Tuesday since he was still sick.  Wednesday, Megan's mom was off work and agreed to watch him, so both Megan and I went into work.

That didn't last long.

Around 9:15 Megan's mom decided to call Megan because our little guy wasn't able to hold his head up anymore from exhaustion.  He hadn't had a wet diaper in eight hours, and he was just not looking good.  Megan called the pediatrician, and they finally relented that we should probably take him to the ER.  Megan called me, and we both left work.  She is closer, so she went home and picked up her mom and the baby.  I met them at the ER.  He looked terrible, and the doctor decided that he needed a chest X-Ray because his lungs sounded bad.

I won't spend much time talking about the local ER because, even though we spent four hours there, I never felt like they took this very seriously.  The chest X-Ray was the most serious thing they did for us, other than call Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and get us moved there.  I will say, the doctor at the local ER said that the X-Ray looked like pneumonia, which turned out to be wrong, but more on that in a bit.

The baby was taken by ambulance all the way into Pittsburgh for the transfer to Children's.  What followed is a hazy two night stay in observation while we waited to see if he would get better.  He has RSV, which caused bronchiolitis.  I'm given to understand that the fancy term I just used actually means acute inflammation of some of the smaller airways in the lungs that allow us to breathe.  It's not pneumonia, which is a bacterial infection in the lungs, but I guess they look similar on an X-Ray and could be mistaken by a doctor that is not trained to read infant X-Rays.

His oxygen levels dipped in the ambulance and he was put on oxygen, which he was kept on until Friday morning.  He was also dehydrated, as evidenced by the lack of wet diapers, thus was given fluids to help hydrate him.  He was connected to the IV for fluids until Friday morning, also.

Thankfully, the oxygen and fluids helped him have a relatively quick recovery.  We only spent two nights in the hospital.  On Thursday he was already starting to look better.  By Friday he was almost completely back to his normal self.  The doctors say he'll still be a little sick for two to four more weeks, but today he's already even better than he was yesterday.  He's sleeping better again, eating more (even had some banana's today!), and playful.  He's still fussier than normal, and he does still have that nasty cough, but otherwise he's looking so much better.

The above story was told about as blandly as possible.  In truth, I'm not sure I have the words to describe the emotions I was feeling throughout this experience.  I have had some difficult experiences in my life before, but I don't know that I've ever had a more heart-wrenching moment than when I walked into his hospital room at Children's and saw him hooked up with all the tubes and wires.  I nearly broke down right then.  I certainly couldn't stop the tears.  Pain, fear, panic...these words don't quite capture the emotions.

He scared us again Thursday morning by getting his oxygen tube out of his nose without any of us noticing.  His oxygen level dipped pretty low and wasn't coming back up, so alarms went off and the nurse rushed in to fix that.  It was a bit crushing to know at that point that he'd been on the oxygen for eighteen hours and was still dependent on it, especially since he was starting to act more himself by that point.

I can say, though, that without a doubt, if we had to go through this horrifying experience, I couldn't have asked for a better hospital to have to do it in.  The staff at Children's was absolutely phenomenal.  There was never a grumpy person that we dealt with.  Nurses from the ER recognized me the day after we were admitted when I was passing through, and they stopped to ask me how the baby was doing.  The desk staff was compassionate and always wished us and our child well.  The security guard, upon entering the building, gave me a free parking pass since my son was taken into the ER.  Even the cafeteria workers joked with us and chatted with us and wished us and our child well.  The staff in the observation unit where we stayed for two days consistently went above and beyond to make us as comfortable as possible.  The doctors spoke to us like people, and never once talked down to us.  Even when the doctors were rounding, one doctor was reading the chart, and another doctor would take time in between to explain what all the medical terms were and what everything meant for us so we knew what was going on at all times.  Everyone was kind, compassionate, and friendly.  I cannot thank the staff there enough for doing everything they could to help us through one of the most terrifying and difficult situations I've ever had to go through.

Finally, RSV is a virus that many believe can be prevented.  There is already one potential vaccine for it, and at least two other studies that I am aware of are looking to make better vaccines.  We contributed to that research because this was an experience that I certainly don't want to repeat, and I don't want other parents to have to go through, either.  This was truly one of the most difficult experiences in my life so far, and I hope I don't have too many more of these to look forward to.