Another hospital stay

Nate's allergies have been awful for the past couple months, so when he started coughing Saturday evening, I figured he just had sinus drainage. We gave him some cough syrup and put him to bed. He woke up at 4:30 am Sunday in a coughing fit and was not in a good mood, to put it mildly. He was up for the day, and so was Blake. :) By late morning, he was still hacking, and I was starting to get worried. After his last horrible hospital stay this summer, the last thing I wanted was to end up back at the children's hospital. I called the on-call pediatrician, who called in a prescription cough medicine and told me to give him a breathing treatment. The breathing treatment helped him stop coughing long enough take a nap, but he woke up with a low grade fever, and I called the doctor back. This particular doctor had never seen Nate before, so I explained why I was so concerned (his history of lung disease, last hospital stay, etc), and we were wondering about the flu, so she prescribed tamiflu. By the time I found a pharmacy that had the last two bottles of tamiflu in our side of the city, Nate was breathing hard. I packed a bag and took him to the hospital.

Blake met us at the ER (and of course Georgia was with us and I was scared to death she was going to catch something!) and they started an hour-long breathing treatment. That didn't help, so they did a chest x-ray then started another hour-long breathing treatment. His oxygen saturation still didn't improve, so they admitted him. But all of this took about 6-7 hours, and we weren't admitted to a room until 3:30 am. They started a continuous breathing treatment for about 8 hours. I've never even heard of this before, and thank goodness he slept through most of it because when he was awake, he was tearing at the mask on his face. They also had to give him an IV. Blake tried his best to refuse it for him, but it had to be done. Poor guy HATED it, of course. He kept holding up his arm, saying "Help!" Also, they had to start steroids again, and you may remember that Nate turns into a monster when he's on steroids.

That night/morning, Nate got some sleep, Blake got a couple hours, Georgia slept like an angel, and I got no sleep. Literally, no sleep. I haven't pulled a real all-nighter since college, and this time I was already sleep deprived! Thankfully, my mom came Monday afternoon to help out, because I was braindead and having a hard time keeping both Georgia and Nate fed, changed, and entertained in this little room, especially with Nate being so cranky.

We figured it would be like last time and on his second night in the hospital he'd be able to go without oxygen and then we'd go home. Well, it didn't happen like that this time. After an exhausting day of fits and considerable efforts I finally got Nate to sleep and fell asleep myself, and a half hour later the nurse woke me up and said Nate was desatting and we had to wake him up. That was about the worst news I could hear at that point. She asked me if he'd blow a pinwheel to clear his lungs out a little, and I was thinking, Lady, do you have any idea what kind of beast you are about to wake up? We woke him up, made him cough ... I'm sure the screaming helped clear his lungs too. The details are a little foggy after that, but I remember that all of us (except Georgia) were wide awake at 2 am. When Nate fell back to sleep, he kept desatting again, and the only thing to do was put oxygen on him. And I knew what that meant--yet another night in the hospital. He has to go a whole night without oxygen before he can go home.

Tuesday kind of dragged by. At one point, I noticed there was some blood on Nate's bed, and I saw his hand was bleeding at the IV site. At first I was a little horrified, but then I realized this meant the IV had come out, and that was good news! The day before, I had begged the doctor to take the IV out and she said she wouldn't, but if it came out on its own she wouldn't replace it. So we were rid of the IV! I think I was as relieved as Nate. Another side effect of the steroids is that it wires him so he doesn't want to sleep. He looked tired enough to nap at 11am, but he wouldn't lay down and fought sleep until 10 pm when he passed out against his own will. He slept about 8 hours last night with no oxygen or waking, and we were all itching to get home this morning. Fortunately, his pediatrician came by early, and we were discharged by 11am.

So best I understand, they think that Nate might have caught a bug of some kind, or it might have just been his allergies, that caused a full blown asthma attack. The pediatrician thought he might have seen a spot of pneumonia on his lungs too. Since this is the third bad respiratory thing Nate's had since May, it's time to do something preventative. I didn't realize Nate had asthma, but I guess it's apparent now. Lots of kids with chronic lung disease of prematurity end up with asthma. So long term, Nate will do one breathing treatment of pulmicort a day to prevent him from getting sick as often, and prevent getting soooo sick when he does catch something. It's a steroid, but it doesn't have the side effects of the liquid steroid. In the short term, he also has an antibiotic, the liquid steroid (till Sunday), and breathing treatments every 4 hours, including at night.

A cute little story: When my mom was coming to Louisville, she asked if we wanted her to bring anything, and Nate said he wanted Hiro (the train). Well, this train is impossible to find, and walmart didn't have it, so she brought him something else. That afternoon, my mom was talking to Nate about my dad, and Nate said, "Pop's comin, and he's bringin Hiro!" It was cute, and my mom told daddy what he said. Then I got an email from my dad saying, "Hiro is on the way. He is leaving West Virginia and should arrive in Louisville at Nate's house by Thursday." Nate was so excited, and that's all he talked about after that. Well, Hiro made better time than we expected. We had been home today for about an hour when UPS rang the doorbell, and I saw the package was addressed to Nate. I said, "Nate! Hiro is here! Hiro is here!" He was running around laughing saying "He's here! He's here!" I opened him up, and Nate said, "Oh my goodness! He's big. Oh my goodness!" We called Pop right away to tell him Hiro made it and to thank him. It made his day. Right now he's saying, "Oh my goodness. I got a new engine."

We're so happy to be home, and I'm going to try to find a way to catch up on sleep. Staying in the hospital is hard work. P.S. if anyone is looking for a charitable thing to do for the holidays, take some new or used toys to your local children's hospital! It really helps to have some different toys to occupy the time.