The Dreaded Letters

R
S
V

The three letters that every preemie parent lives in total fear of. I felt like I got socked in the stomach when the ER doctor told me.

So Eden has had a little runny nose off and on for about a week. Nothing I was worried about at all. She was still happy and eating fine, so I even sent her to school. The real trouble started on Wednesday night at bedtime. She started coughing and pretty much coughed all night. We started breathing treatments, and on Thursday I got her ready for school but she was still coughing through breakfast so I decided to keep her home. Around lunch time the cough was sounding really "juicy" so I called the doctor's office and got her an appointment at 5pm.

The doctor was concerned with how bad her lungs sounded, and she had fluid in one of her ears, so we started an antibiotic and got a lung xray. We made it through that night at home with John and I rotating treatments every 3+ hours around the clock. On Friday I called the office and found out that they did not think it looked like bacterial/aspiration pneumonia, but rather viral and/or reactive airway disease (asthma). We decided to continue with the antibiotic, and add an oral steroid. Friday night was more of the same, with treatments round the clock. Early in the day on Saturday she seemed to be holding her own, and we thought maybe she would turn the corner. Instead she got progressively worse as the day went on and just before dinner, when she wasn't even lasting 2 hours before needing another treatment, we decided we had to bite the bullet.

I was second guessing myself right up until we walked through the door because she fell asleep in the car and was breathing so nicely. I didn't want to wake her up. Then we got to triage and she was satting 97, which is good, so I was thinking "great, a $50 copay and they will just send us home!" And she continued to do pretty well for the first hour or so, but as time went on and she got more and more tired, her sats started dropping. They gave 5 albuterol treatments in 5 hours and she seemed to be getting worse instead of better, so they were going to admit us anyway...then the RSV test came back positive. Bummer.

I could write a whole post ranting about the FIVE ATTEMPTS it took to get an IV in, and how I seriously wanted to KILL somebody, but instead ended up breaking down in tears after trying really hard to keep it together.

Last night was miserable. Completely and totally flippin miserable. We didn't get to our room until 11:30pm, and Eden didn't get to sleep until midnight. She was completely exhausted. Then, EVERY SINGLE TIME somebody new came in the room and touched her she completely freaked out. They were coming in about every hour. She was inconsolable, screaming and crying, saying such things as "Mommy, it hurts me, I'm scared, and No, no, no I don't want it." It was sad, and scary, and miserable and nobody got ANY sleep. As I've said before, I HATE nighttime in the hospital.

Things are better now. Eden is much more relaxed now that we've had a chance to talk about it and check the place out. Her oxygen needs are really low during the day (we just weaned her down to a quarter liter and she's doing fine), but all hell breaks loose at night. I'm putting my money on a discharge around Wednesday. We'll see how it goes.

To top it off...as if all of this wasn't bad enough....John just texted me that Holland is coughing a lot and has a runny nose. We could very well end up with two kids in the hospital once again. Sigh.

I don't have my camera with me, so I'll post this one for myself...to remember how she looks when life is GOOD!