Owain’s Hospital Update – From the ED to Admission

Owain has taken my computer hostage for pretty much the entire time we have been in the hospital. Earlier I got a ransom note that said unless you want me to scream all day, you will give me your computer and make sure that it is tuned into Nick Jr at all times. My only option was to give into his demands. I think I made the right choice though. I had my phone and he had my computer, everyone was happy(ish).

It is close to 10pm and I have been up since 3:30 this morning when Owain woke me up with the most horrific crying, struggling to breathe and was a horrible shade of blue. After a quick diaper change, Owee was getting a nebulizer treatment of albuterol. It was clear within less than a minute that it was not working, he was screaming, struggling to breath and getting cyanotic before my eyes. Seconds later I was outside giving him albuterol with his inhaler, that didn’t work either. He was still blue, and screaming.

After a mad dash around the house to collect everything we needed to get through the night in the ER, we were out the door. We had another one of those visits to the ER where I walked into a packed waiting room, rattled off his CHD history, and skipped triage and the waiting room to walk straight back, and settled into a room. The whole thing was done on autopilot. I am not sure how I feel about the fact that I can get him to the ER so quickly without hardly thinking about what I am doing.

The kids called to see how we were doing today (there were some Wii questions in there to!) and E Nut tugged at my heart strings. He asked to talk to Owee, and Owee was happy to talk to E Nut. The conversation went something like this…

E Nut: Hi Owee, I miss you. How are you doing?
Owee: Good.
E Nut: Is it scary there?
Owee: Yeah
E Nut: Are you scared?
Owee Yeah
E Nut: It’s OK you’re going to get better.
Owee: I love you goodbye

So darn sweet. I got all teary eyed.

Turns out the reason the breathing treatments I was giving him didn’t work suddenly made sense after the x-rays when he was diagnosed with croup. I was giving him a treatment for asthma when he actually had croup. He has had two different steroids and we are still giving him his asthma treatments, and all of them are working great. Now we are just watching to see how his croup does overnight, and he has a low grade fever. Normally I wouldn’t worry about a fever at all, but I worry if it gets higher that it will of course keep us here longer.

We were walking around the floor with Owee in the wagon, and I looked across the floor, and there were about 20 kid and some parents from a church youth group. The mentioned that they were doing a 30 famine, which I am not sure exactly what that is, but they said that while they were doing that, that they were going around the community to do good deeds. They all brought tons of stuffed friends and passed them out to the kids on the pediatric floor. Owee ended up with 4 new friends and they jumped right into the fun and spent the afternoon hanging out with Ruff Ruff and Bunny Bear, Owee’s 2 best friends. I had a nice chat with a young tween who used to spend time at UVa as a cancer patient, but as of August 13th of last year she is done with it! She was such a sweet girl, and Owain adored her.

We are so ready to go home, but I am thankful that it looks like we will be going home tomorrow. I am praying that everything we are doing for him keeps working and he keeps getting better, and that we can go home tomorrow.