Spent the Night in the ER with Owee

E Nut was home sick from school yesterday, he started getting a nasty cough Saturday night. Wee Nut got that same cough last night around dinner time, was wheezing, junkie, bluer than his normal and having a very hard time breathing. By the time I got every one else settled into bed and got him his treatment it was after 9pm. I thought I had it under control, that I was managing it well. After one treatment his respiratory rate dropped from 44 breaths per minute down to 27 bpm and his breathing was much better.We settled in to the couch and he laid on me, drooling all over, with labored, but deep breaths. I thought I had it covered, the humidifier was filling the room with moist menthol filled steam, I had several episodes of Desperate House Wives on the DVR. I was set for a night of listening to him breath, nebulizer treatments every 4 hours and some Desperate drama. I sure was wrong about that!

Within an hour, he was getting cranky fast, not sleeping, throwing himself all over me and the couch. The more upset he got the harder it was for him to breathe. He slept  for 15-20 minutes and then was up for an hour, then restless sleep for 15-20 minutes, tossing and turning. I gave him another albuteral nebulizer treatment around 1:15am and when there was no improvement and he started getting worse very quickly, I started making phone calls to get some help with the other kids. Thanks so much Krysti for running over here in the middle of the night and staying with my kids!

By 2:15 he was in a trauma room with another albuteral treatment, blood being drawn, hooked up to the Heart monitor and a pulse ox. When we checked in his respiratory rate was up to 84 breaths per minute, but his O2 sats managed to hang in the lower 80’s to upper 70’s. There was lots of panic with the nurses who had a hard time believing that his O2 was normally in the lower 80’s. I wasn’t going to argue with them though, as soon as they saw his O2 sats in triage, they sent him back to trauma, and that is just where I wanted to be. They ran tests for RSV and gave him 2 tubes of epinephrine in the nebulizer and took some X-rays of his chest. He was not happy about any of it for the first hour, and then after all the breathing treatments he was feeling much better.

All the tests came back negative. No RSV, no pneumonia and all of his blood work was good. They kept him until almost 6am and then set us free. His breathing is still labored, and he is very sick, but he is home and doing good for now. He is still very cranky and sooo tired. I am hoping that last night was the worst of it for him and I don’t have to take him back to the ER tonight.