Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Inhalers, Monitors & Medicine Oh My!

(sad mommy in the ER)















What a week it has been! I was so looking forward to all the posts on Christmas firsts...pics with Santa, homemade stockings, family get togethers etc. etc. However God has a very strange sense of humor at times & much of this has had to take a back seat. Last monday, (shortly after I had the thought..." I can't believe Ruby is almost six months old and hasn't gotten sick once!") our little lady started to get the sniffles, which grew into a cough and a very wheezy girl. By wednesday it was bad enough to consider taking her to the doctor, but i decided against it with the reasoning that they wouldn't be able to do anything for a cold. Thursday morning came and Ru sounded awful, so Daniel decided to take her to the pediatrician. All the while she is in the best of spirits; smiling, laughing and just being her normal happy self. When the doctor saw her he told us she had bronchiolitis (inflammation of the bronchioles within the lungs), and that her lungs sounded pretty bad. He debated admitting her to the hospital, and decided against it only because "she was in such a good mood" and didn't "look" like a sick baby at all, she was even laughing at the him.

He sent her home with an inhaler and had us schedule a follow up appointment for saturday which we never made it to. Instead, Danny went to pick her up friday night from Grandmas and she sounded considerably worse. Long story short, (yeah right!) we took her to the ER, and they were concerned with her heavy wheezing and crackely lungs. They took chest x-rays, suctioned her nose with what looked like a pressurized turkey baster, catheterized her nose to suck the mucus out of her lungs and gave her multiple breathing treatments of albuterol. All the while my girl was all smiles with the exception of whenever they had anything shoved up her tiny little nose which is quite understandable! :( Again the hospital debated whether or not to admit her, because other than the snotty nose she had no outward symptoms, but, after the fifth breathing treatment with minimal results and a positive test result for RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus) they decided we needed to stay. RSV is really just a cold virus, but it hits infants much harder causing insane amounts of mucus which becomes dangerous when it gets in the lungs and it is also SUPER contagous! So, Ruby & I spent the night at Long Beach Memorial both friday and saturday night, rather than doing fun things like going to see the christmas lights, or baking cookies...you get the point!

(this is how she woke up in the hospital!)











After two days of having her oxygen levels monitored, several more breathing treatments and a couple doses of prednisolone as well as countless nose suctionings,
we are now home. With the new routine being, using the humidifier, propping up her mattress and suctioning her poor little nose several times an hour as well as continuing on the inhaler. As you might have guessed this has impacted our Christmas plans greatly as she is still very contagous as well as susceptable and we don't want to share her germs with any of her cousins although she has already managed to share with both mommy AND daddy who now have colds! ;) Many things that we wanted to do didn't get done, but there's always next year, and the important thing is I have a healthy baby who's on the mend. We're so grateful we caught this early, because it could have been much worse. I'm just happy to have my little muffin home on Christmas and to be able to spend the holiday as a family! Thank you to all those who left messages of well wishes and prayers & to those who didn't even know about all the goings on, well, it was one less thing to stress out about during this crazy time of year!

("what the heck is this glowing thing on my toe?")

















why it's an oxygen monitor for Ruby the red-toed baby!















Daddy & his Angel Bear

2 comments:

Emily said...

so scary. We went through something similar last year with Anna and it was terrible. I am so sorry.I hope Ruby is better soon. :)

Girl Nugget said...

WHAT THE????
Poor little Lemon!!! I am glad she is doing better.
Love u MEAN IT! Tell Lemon that same exact thing.