The Worst Kind of ‘Firsts’

For the last week or so, Helen Grace has had a stuffy nose. That is pretty typical for her this time of year, and I was watching her carefully, worrying it was going to move into bronchitis like it has for the last few season changes. She woke up late Sunday night/early Monday morning coughing her poor little head off and wheezing, and within an hour of watching her, I was freaking out. None of us got any sleep that night, and I changed my plans to include taking her to the doctor first thing Monday morning (my birthday) before going on to work. As I was about to get dressed, she was so pitiful and started insisting on getting into the car RIGHT THEN. I knew it was bad if she was that serious about leaving, knowing that we were going to the doctor, so I threw something on and we ran out the door.

She, of course, freaked out as usual when we pulled up, but I managed to get her out of the car and inside- nothing short of a miracle. She calmed down enough to let the nurse get all her vitals, and we waited in the exam room with the door open. The doctor apparently ‘heard’ how bad HG was and came to see us first. I’m still not sure if he heard her wheezing and coughing or if he heard her whining, “I don’t wanna see the doctor.” But none the less, he listened to her chest and immediately put the oxygen clip thingie on her finger, and we waited and waited and waited while he read the numbers on the screen in silence. I finally asked him what he was waiting on. An oxygen saturation level should be somewhere in the 90s, as close to 100 as possible, and hers was reading in the 70s and 80s. He thought he just wasn’t getting a good reading. Soon, the respiratory therapist came running in to try as well, and then the nurse came in with a finger prick, a dropper of prednisone, and a breathing treatment machine. HG promptly puked up the prednisone into the breathing mask. Fun stuff. Even after the treatment, her levels were still in the 80s. The doctor sits down in front of me, puts his hand on HG’s knee, and says, “Mom, we are going to send you on to LeBonheur…and we’re going to call an ambulance to take you there…and it will be here within the next 10 minutes.”

I felt like I was in one of those moments in a movie right after a bomb goes off. People’s mouths continued to move, but I couldn’t hear a thing; the whole world went silent for a moment…and then the sounds came rushing back in. I was scared to death and was trying desperately to be strong for HG and not let her see me crying. They smacked a mask on HG’s face for another breathing treatment. She was NOT happy about the mask appearing again. At all. I didn’t have time to do anything but listen to the respiratory therapist telling me over and over ‘It’s okay,’ send her to my car to get a diaper bag, and call John before the first wave of EMTs came pouring in the door. Soon I heard the gurney slamming down the hallway, and nurses started scattering to make room. Of course, Helen Grace wasn’t going anywhere with them, so Mama had to sit on the gurney first and then put her on my lap, and then we were ‘secured’ with three monster seat belts. They popped the gurney up, and off we sailed down the hallway and out the back door of the clinic.

HG was somewhat interested in the ambulance other than noting that she didn’t want to go to see another doctor (I was trying to avoid the ‘hospital’ word), but when we got inside it, she realized all kinds of things were about to happen that she didn’t know anything about. Not to mention that there were about 8 guys all staring at us and screaming things at each other. They immediately started scoping out her arm for an IV, and she’s screaming, “I don’t want a shot! I don’t want a shot!” And that’s what got me the most- I couldn’t deny it. She was about to get stuck with a needle whether she liked it or not. And I couldn’t do it for her. And it was going to hurt. I was grateful that her back was to me and that she couldn’t see the crocodile tears rolling down my face. Luckily, God sent us a firefighter named Mr. Matt that had a little girl at home, and he took it upon himself as his mission to keep her distracted. He asked her every question that he could think of, and while she really did freak out when the needle went in, she soon calmed down, held her arm straight by holding my hand at her side, and kept answering Mr. Matt. The other EMTs finally had to kick him out of the ambulance so that we could leave. I am eternally grateful for his distractions and letting her last words to him be a somewhat heartfelt ‘Hotty toddy!’

They kept her on oxygen all the way to LeBonheur, and once we made it to the ER, they immediately gave her a few more breathing treatments. Then the inflow of freaking-out-but-trying-to-remain-calm grandparents began. She got another dose of prednisone, which she kept down this time, and with the help of the great nurses and doctors, she stayed pretty calm (albeit a little feisty). She REALLY didn’t like the ‘stickers’ or monitors on her chest, and she was a big baby about the band-aid like bandage that held the oxygen saturation monitor on her finger and even the ID bracelet. Nurses would offer to give her stickers, and she’d freak out thinking they meant more sticky monitors on her chest. The nurses kept the books and crayons coming, and the tv above her bed with cartoons was a lifesaver.

She then had a chest x-ray, which really scared her at first, but again, the techs helped make it fun and she soon was a willing participant. Thankfully, I was only a few feet away from her behind a small metal partition, and she didn’t have to lay down. She stood and hugged the x-ray machine and then turned to the side and held her arms up, wearing a little bitty apron around her waist to protect her bottom half. She thought seeing the pictures of her bones was really cool. “It’s my skeleton, Mama!”

By 1:00 p.m. or so, her oxygen saturation level was up to 92, and her chest x-ray came back clear. {I later learned that ‘clear’ meant there was only viral inflammation and not bacterial infection like pneumonia.} So we were finally sent home with a Albuterol inhaler to use every 4-6 hours.

We made it home at long last around 1:45 p.m. on Monday with a sleeping baby. She woke up around 4:00 p.m. and I noticed a little panting, so I gave her the inhaler which seemed to help. Everyone came over for dinner and birthday cake to celebrate my 32nd birthday, and she was going crazy, running around and begging me to let her ride her tricycle outside (to which I said no). By the time we started settling down for bed, her panting was back in a big way. The inhaler didn’t help at all. I called the on call nurse, and when she called me back, HG was asleep but still short of breath. She, of course, told me to get back to LeBonheur, so we packed her up and hit the road around 9:30 p.m. She slept all the way there but promptly woke up to watch the chaos that is the ER late at night.

What happened in the next four hours wasn’t pretty- 1. John and I were extremely tired, worried, impatient, and OVER all of the shenanigans happening in the ER, and 2. HG never went back to sleep. It didn’t help that HG continually said, “I wanna go home. I wanna go home.” All I wanted was for some medical professional to listen to her lungs and tell me if she were wheezing, make sure she was getting plenty of oxygen, and make the panting stop. After John and I all but had a hissy fit in the middle of the ER, we finally saw a doctor around 2:00 a.m. He ordered another breathing treatment {THANK YOU!} to help her catch her breath, but that ended up opening her airways and causing her to wheeze…which left them no choice but to admit us. While I wasn’t excited about staying overnight and having to explain to HG that we weren’t going home, I was just relieved to be able to turn the light out in our little partition and let baby girl go to sleep. She was happy with my response that it was so late that they were just going to give us a room way up high in the tower to let us sleep. After that, she laid over on me, closed her eyes, and was off to la la land.

She slept peacefully for almost an hour until a resident that had been sent to ask us 1,000 questions to admit us had to check her ears, nose, and mouth before we were moved to a room. Well, we could do all of those but her mouth with her asleep. And waking a three year old with about two hours of sleep is NOT something I’d recommend. It was really like watching a feral cat attacking something. Not pretty. But I finally got my arms around her (somehow without getting a black eye), got her mouth opened, wrangled her off the gurney and into a wheelchair, and upstairs we went in a flurry. It was now around 4:00 a.m.

She fell asleep in my lap as we waited for them to switch out a crib for a hospital bed, and as soon as it arrived, I climbed into bed with her. She was able to sleep about two hours or so, and I slept a little, thanks to Granddaddy arriving and shoo-ing off any nurses with tasks that weren’t urgent. Also, when a nurse tried to take her oxygen levels off her thumb and got something in the 80s (anything less than 90 would have required her to put an oxygen mask on a sleeping HG), Granddaddy politely asked her to tried another finger. We were so relieved when her middle finger gave them a number she was happy with. (Ugh.) The respiratory therapist was even able to do her inhaler while she was asleep- I was very impressed!

Finally, around 6:00 or 6:30 a.m., a know-it-all resident bounds into the room, chipper as can be, and leans right down into HG’s face, speaking in a LOUD sing song voice. I was in the middle of trying to warn her about the earlier awakening experience in the ER, when HG reaches up and ‘honks’ the doctor’s nose. GASP! And then they both start laughing. WHEW! I was paralyzed for a moment!

After that, HG was up for the day, but thankfully and somewhat shockingly, she was happy. The doctors heard a little bit of wheezing early in the morning, but her oxygen level was in the 90s. They watched her carefully, continued her inhaler, and eventually, the wheeze went away. With another dose of prednisone, she was WIRED and was literally running laps around the room. Thank goodness that Spiffer and GD were there to keep up with her because this Mama was spent! See the “Paperwork” video below for loads of laughs.

We were eventually discharged around 2:00 p.m., after a very unpleasant experience with a slooooooowwww nurse. She came home and slept for hours, and so did I.

After meeting with her doctor on Thursday, he thinks it could be asthma, but she’s too young to diagnose and since she’s only had two incidents of needing breathing treatments (obviously one was worse than the other), it’s more likely seasonal allergies. We now have a breathing treatment machine at home for emergencies, in addition to the inhaler that we can use more often. She has finally taken all of her prednisone, so I’m happy that she’ll be able to sleep better now. But I also worry that it was masking some of her symptoms, so I haven’t let down my defenses yet. I’m praying that this is just a one time experience and not a recurring theme in baby girl’s life.

In the ER at LeBonheur The nurse dressed up Piggy in gear like HG. FINALLY asleep in the ER- Round #2 in the wee hours of the a.m. We were so proud of that 100% oxygen saturation level (blue number on the right) that we had to take a picture! The prednisone is now taking effect. “No more doctors!!” Now she’s really getting the hang of this and doesn’t fight the nurses when they take her vitals. One last breathing treatment!!!! Waving the flag of surrender- Mama’s about to come unglued on a nurse!

Looking for her “paperwork”