Well, it has taken a serious illness in my family to get me to blog again. It's only been a little over six months, not too shabby, huh?
(in the 1st hospital, before being transferred to the major hospital/ICU)
Anyways, this last weekend was one of the scariest of my mommy life so far (but apparently not too scary to keep me from taking pictures, LOL)! Last Wednesday night, August 6th, Tyler had a tiny bit of a runny nose and said he didn't feel good. He woke up Thursday morning and complained he still didn't feel good but didn't have any symptoms at all, so off to daycare he went. I got a call from daycare about 9:30am to pick him up because he still wasn't feeling good and wouldn't leave the couch (so very unlike him). When I picked him up, he still didn't have any symptoms of any kind, so I took him to stay with grandpa for the day and went back to work. Grandpa said he was fine all day and he was even playing soccer in the back yard that evening. About 10:00pm Thursday night we tried to get him to go to bed and he just kept saying that he didn't feel good and couldn't sleep but still didn't have any symptoms of anything at this point...his runny nose had even gone away.About midnight, however, everything changed. He started feeling much worse and his breathing really started to get very quick and shallow. He then proceeded to whimper and cry pretty much all night, and by morning his breathing was so fast that we were getting very worried. This was seriously the sickest we had ever seen him! I took him to urgent care as soon as they opened Friday morning and they could tell he wasn't breathing very well. Before we even finished checking in at the counter, they brought out the blood oxygen tester and it registered at 77 (anything over 92 is considered normal)! Needless to say, they sent us to the ER right away! Now, even though I am usually a paranoid mom, I really try not to run him to the ER in the middle of the night...now that I look back, I should have trusted my instincts!
Ok, back to the story. We got to the ER, and there were about 3 people ahead of us. Despite that, they got us right in before everyone else and started taking vitals and everything on him right away. They put an IV in his arm, put him on oxygen with tubes in his nose, took a chest x-ray, and more. About an hour later the Dr. came back. The verdict? Pneumonia! The ER called his pediatrician and she admitted us to the hospital and said we would be there at least a couple nights, maybe even up to a week! She was leaving for the weekend that evening, so the on-call Dr. took over after she left. Well, the minute the on-call Dr. came in a couple hours later, she took one look at him and said that he needed to be sent to the major hospital right away so he could be in the ICU. The way he was looking she was afraid that he would stop breathing and they didn't have the resources to fully deal with that type of situation there. She started yelling at the nurses to get her mega amounts of the Albuterol and get him on the steroid treatment right away. It was totally like something straight from Grey's Anatomy on TV! The Dr. then left the room and came back a short moment later to tell us she was ordering Care Flight as soon as I signed the consent. Well, at this point, the mega dose of Albuterol breathing treatment had kicked in and he really didn't look any worse to me than he had all day. I declined the Care Flight but consented to an ambulance ride instead. By the time the ambulance got there, Ty was actually feeling much better. Robert had also been released form work (finally...but that's another story) and had shown up by then. I personally don't ever want to ride in an ambulance, so Robert decided to ride with him. When the EMT's tried to put Ty on the gurney, he freaked out (he's a little afraid of heights sometimes and the gurney really scared him). Instead, they let Robert carry him to the ambulance, and he even got to ride in a seat in the back of the ambulance instead of on the gurney. I followed behind them in my car. Since Ty really was fully alert, he thought the ambulance ride was pretty cool. Every time they stopped at a light or something, he looked back and waved at me, LOL! Grandma and grandpa were following behind me because they were very concerned about him, too!
(getting ready for an ambulance ride...at least he was alert enough to enjoy the $100 ambulance ride...thank goodness for good insurance!)
When we got to the other hospital, the pediatric ICU Dr. really didn't see a need for him to be in ICU, so he admitted him to the regular pediatric floor. Turns out, we really could have stayed in our own local hospital afterall. Anyways, Ty responded to all the treatments very quickly, so we ended up staying only 3 days, 2 nights in the hospital and went home Sunday evening. Without going into too much detail, we all would have much rather stayed in our local hospital...it's so much nicer...and cleaner! But that's a story for another post!
(in the pediatric ICU - these are his "angry eyes"...what can I say, we were ALL a little bored!)
Ok, so how on earth did a healthy kid with no symptoms of anything and his last cold being over a month ago get pneumonia so quick and so hard? Well, turns out he also has asthma. Apparently, kids with asthma are way more susceptible to pneumonia. Explains why every time he gets sick it goes directly into his lungs. When he was 5 months old, we had a one night stay in the hospital because he had a bad cold, and they sent him home with a nebulizer and Albuterol breathing treatments. We have suspected asthma since then, but there really wasn't anything else except when he gets a cold that would lead the Dr. to actually diagnose him with asthma. Unfortunately, the pneumonia pushed him into the asthmatic category. So far, we don't have to do any long term or daily asthma treatments, so that's good. But who knows what playing sports will bring! He was actually suppose to start soccer on Saturday, so he missed that due to the stupid pneumonia! He's back to his normal self now and pretty much off of all the medication and treatments. I just really hope that pneumonia isn't a common occurrence for him now!