Monday, September 19, 2011

First pneumonia of the season!

So 2 weeks ago Adrian had a nasty cold. He stayed with his dad for an extra couple of days and then came to my house. Even with the extra time away I managed to catch it. I was so relieved that I didn't have to call of work even though I felt like crap. I wasn't *that* sick! I was JUST past it and on Wednesday morning Charlie's pulse-ox woke me up at 4:45. Her pulse was over 200, she was burning up, and had sprayed her crib with green mucous. She was FINE when I put her to be the night before! So I plunged some tylenol in her tube and suctioned her out really well and got in the shower. I had reset her monitor to alarm at 210 for her heartrate so it wouldn't constantly go off while I was in the shower. No luck. She went even higher. At that point the tylenol *should* have been kicking in but her fever was still almost 103.

And then her sats started to drop even with her concentrator cranked to 3 liters. All the classic signs of pneumonia. Oy.

So I started packing her up to head to the ER. I called off work (oh, yay...so much for avoiding that!) and then her nurse go there and we got the show on the road. When we got to the ER, Charlie decided to start doing better (she ALWAYS does!) and her chest x-ray came back looking hazy, but no clear pneumonia. At that point I'm thinking, "Man I called off for nothing!" But they kept her overnight anyway. I went back to work the next day, then hauled Adrian up to the hospital. Apparently her chest x-ray that day showed a clear pneumonia. The doctor said it probably was already pneumonia on Wednesday it just didn't show up yet. So we didn't waste time bringing her in. I'm sure catching it so super early saved us all a lot of trouble. By Friday she was already 100 times better and I took her home Saturday.

Getting her out of the hospital on Saturday was no easy feat! The doctor kept coming up with reasons for her to stay! "Well, we'd like to see her on only 1L of oxygen before sending her home." Um, why!? She's sometimes on more than that when she's *healthy*! "Well she's doing this funny thing with her mouth that looks like seizures". Yeah it's called MOVING HER MOUTH. It's normal and she does it all the time. Sheesh. "Well she got worse since yesterday". Yeah, that's because I went home to sleep and apparently ya'll don't know how to properly suction! They didn't like it when I told them that. But really, it's ridiculous that the RN's can't do it right. Finally I said, "You know what, Dr. Shell is her regular pulm doc and if he were here, he'd send her home." I went and got lunch, and when I got back to the floor I guess they'd called Dr. Shell at home and he said to send us home. LMAO

A lady from housekeeping left a little towel kitty on the table:


Feeling pretty icky on day 2:


Feeling a little better with the toy bear Adrian picked out for her (he was supposed to be picking a toy for himself!):


Feeling LOTS better!:


And now we're home and she's on a 2 week course of antibiotics. Bleh. She's doing great though! It always amazes me how well she manages these illnesses!

2 comments:

Debbie said...

Looking better -- thank goodness! Hope everyone is doing better and can catch up on their sleep.

Kat - Ruthie-dos.blogspot.com said...

I'm so glad she's doing better... and could Adrian be sweeter and more considerate if he tried? I think not... he is so adorable... picking her out a toy instead of one for himself.