So its been one thing after another for us this flu/cold season. Lily got croup the end of January and she had just recovered from it when I got the flu. I started feeling better, but then Crystal came down with a massive cough and sore throat and fever, so we took her to the doctor and he thought she had the flu. The next day I was sick again, Ty still wasn't feeling well from his last illness and this one got him too, and Lily was starting to cough again. SO I had HAD it with sickness and I called my mom and asked her if they would come get us and take us to Idaho Falls. I just knew getting out of the cooped up house would help! And sure enough after a week we were all feeling TONS better. Crystal's cough was completely gone and Lily's was mostly gone too! I was feeling 100% by the next week. We stayed at my parent's for 2 weeks and were healthy when we left (though we had managed to give it to both my mom and my dad ... :-( sorry). We left for Utah on Saturday afternoon, spent the night at our house in Provo, and Sunday morning we drove to Orangeville to visit my Grandpa. That night while she was sleeping, Crystal started coughing HORRIBLY! Worse that it had EVER been. My dad was so worried about her he practically slept in her room that night. Monday we drove back to Provo where my parents dropped me off and headed back to Idaho Falls. At some point during the week Lily's cough came back too, but we had been through this so much this winter that I really wasn't concerned about it.
Ty was STILL sick from his illness that started a month before, Crystal's cough was TERRIBLE, and by Friday Lily's cold was so bad she was having a hard time coughing and her regular wheeze was more intense! I was the only HEALTHY person in the family! That entire week I spent CLEANING AND CLEANING AND CLEANING! I DEEP DEEP cleaned EVERY room in the house (which by the way only took 2 days to completely destroy this week ... lol). I cleaned ALL the bedding and blankets too. My plan was to continue week by week to deep clean one room a day until all the sickness was GONE! I was going to continue to clean all bedding and blankets and sanitize toys and everything EVERY week till we all got better!
Friday night I made Ty track someone down to help him give both the girls a blessing. Lily's wheeze had me extremely concerned at that point and Crystal's cough was painful to listen too. Over the weekend Lily's wheeze continued to worsen and her entire little body would move as she breathed in and out. I was still hoping her blessing would somehow miraculously heal her ailment and we wouldn't have to go to the doctor. The reason for this was because I KNEW that there was only 1 thing the doctor could do that would be different than what we were already doing: hospitalize her! It was something I was so petrified of I wanted to pretend that if I didn't take her into the doctor, she wouldn't be sick enough to need it.
Every time I prayed for her to get better or wondered why the blessing wasn't "working," I would remember a particular Sunday when I was in high school and my mom had woke up with a tremendous earache. She was in severe pain, but she didn't want to go to the doctor on a Sunday so she asked my dad for a blessing that the pain would subside. Not long after her blessing, the pain in her ear intensified to a point where she couldn't wait any longer and my dad took her to the doctor. When the doctor looked in her ear, he commented that it was SO infected she was lucky it hadn't ruptured. I remember her later telling me that she was really upset on the way to the doctor because she had had faith that the Lord could heal her, but her pain grew worse instead of better. She realized later that the Lord KNEW she could be healed by getting the medication her ear required. Had her pain not grown worse that day, she would have waited till Monday to see a doctor and potentially have damaged her ear permanently.
As you can imagine, this wasn't the answer to my prayers I wanted, so I continually pushed it aside. I was still sure for some odd reason that by not taking her to the doctor I was "saving" her from being sick enough for the hospital ... I know it seems really strange, but I obviously wasn't thinking clearly!
Well miraculously we made it to Monday without her ever turning blue or anything else that would have rushed us to the Emergency Room. She was supposed to have a well check Thursday, so we called Monday and asked to move the appointment up to that day. We also asked if they would look at Crystal too since she seemed to have the same illness.
(Random Side Story: Crystal in the waiting room)In the waiting room at the office Crystal started crying about something which sent her into a horrible coughing fit. At which point they asked us to put a mask on her ... lol ... I looked at them like they were crazy! I understand their concern but she's TWO YEARS OLD! There was NO way in this world we were going to get her to put a face mask on! This made me super uncomfortable and I wanted to leave just so they'd stop judging (okay just the one lady at the desk who wasn't all that nice anyway... lol ... but still ... it felt like everyone)!
(K back to the trauma! Oh but first just another random note ... Lily weight in at over 15 lbs! lol) Anyway, when the doctor walked in our room he heard Lily's wheeze and said, "I'm 100% sure that's RSV..." The worst letters in the alphabet to a mother with an infant... at least this mother! Then he looked at her chart and the next thing he said is something else a mother never wants to hear about her child, "If we can't get her oxygen levels up I'm afraid we are going to have to admit her to the hospital." He must have seen terror in my eyes because he took the monitor and tried to get another oxygen reading. He said maybe it just wasn't a good reading, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get a reading over 82% and most the time it was in the 70's. I think he must have known that I needed to take it all in for a minute because he moved on to Crystal without deciding anything concrete. He checked Crystal's ears and said on top of RSV she also had an ear infection. But he felt that her RSV would clear itself up and gave us an antibiotic for her ear. Then it was time to go back to Lily. He checked everything else and checked her oxygen again, but it was still bad. He gave her a neb treatment hoping it would help but 15 minutes after the treatment her O2 levels had actually dropped (mostly cuz she was sleeping). There was nothing else he could do from the office and told us she needed to be admitted to the hospital at least overnight. And Crystal wasn't going to be allowed in the hospital because not only is it RSV season but she actually had RSV.
So after nearly 2 hrs at the doctor's office, we left trying to figure out how everything was going to work out. I wanted Ty to come with me to the hospital at least to get settled in mostly because I was still completely horrified that my baby was so sick. But he had work in 30 minutes AND we had no one to watch Crystal. Its times like these when we realize how few people we know in Provo. The people we do know have small children or are older and we didn't want Crystal giving anyone RSV! I finally called the older neighbor couple next door and explained our situation. And they had no problem watching Crystal for us. In fact when we got home, he helped Ty give Lily another blessing before we headed to the hospital.
It took us an hour but we finally made it to the hospital (which by the way is only 5 minutes from our house). I was in a panic because it was taking us so long to get there, but Ty was mostly just mad that the doctor thought Lily needed the hospital! He was sure she wasn't THAT sick. Before they put oxygen on her, they did this HORRIBLE procedure where they stick a tube up her nose to the back of her throat to suck the mucus out of her throat and airway. We waited in the treatment room while they prepared a room for us. When they finally put us in a room and she had a crib to lay in, I left with Ty to go get a few things to stay overnight (you'd think i would have done that already since it took an hour to get there, but I was in a sick panic and wasn't thinking about that).
Ty took Crystal with him to work and I went back to the hospital. The doctor came in to check on her (which really was nice of him because the nurse told me he wouldn't be coming by because doctors only come once a day and he had already made his rounds that day). We talked about how she was doing and what needed to happen for her to go home. This is when he learned how completely horrible our insurance was and that we really needed the stay to be as short as possible! He spent a good half hour to an hour talking to me about alternative things we could do to avoid a long hospital stay. When he left he had decided to 1. change her stay to 'observation' instead of 'inpatient.' (I have no idea what that means but its supposed to be cheaper - didn't do us much good because we just found out they still charged us for an 'inpatient' stay), 2. let us take her home on oxygen instead of weening her beforehand, and 3. have us go to the hospital for outpatient suctioning as long as she didn't need it more than 2 times a day. So the Respitory Theropist (RT) came in around 11:30 to suction her and asked me what we were looking for before they'd let her go home. I told him that if she didn't need suctioned too much then they'd let us go home ... I didn't see him the rest of the night! lol! Don't worry I'm sure if her O2, or breaths/minute were bad he would have come and checked on her, but otherwise he was going to leave her alone.
It was so SCARY seeing her with wires attached to her.
I was afraid to pick her up at first,
but when the doctor came in that night, he assured me it was okay. :D
This picture looks sad but she's actually feeling better at this point and smiling
occasionally for me (we hadn't seen smiles in a few days so it was great)!
(Another side story: Lily's Roommate) Around 2:30 in the morning the pediatric floor ran out of rooms and had to double some patients up. A two month old boy who also had RSV was put in our room. I felt bad that they made his mom get up and change rooms in the middle of the night (not only change rooms but the side of the room they were on was quite a bit smaller than Lily's side so it was quite cramped), but at the same time I was glad it wasn't me who had to move (I'm horrible I know!). I asked her about it later and she said she was already up with him so she wasn't too upset about the move. He was admitted around the same time as Lily, and seemed to be in the same condition as her by the next morning. They didn't have insurance at all, so she was as anxious as I was to get out of there. Her doctor had told her he wouldn't discharge her son till he had gone 6 HRS without oxygen. They tried all day Tuesday, but he insisted on being on 1/16 - 1/32 ltrs of oxygen which btw is such a small dose that the little ball on the regulator wasn't even floating. When she found out we were going home with oxygen she asked her doctor about it, but the RT (thank goodness we had a different RT) insisted he needed suctioned too often to be discharged (I say thank goodness because Lily was wheezing MUCH more than he was, but our RT only suctioned her if she absolutely NEEDED it). When I left around 4:30, it had been decided that he needed to stay at least one more night. I really hope they got to go home the next day oxygen FREE! She lived a good 20 minutes from the hospital and had at least 3 if not 4 little ones at home, so I just hope they were able to go home without having to make the trips back that we did. The hospital was also working hard to get them on Medicaid. Hopefully they were successful and this wonderful family won't have the weight of such a bill on their shoulders! Our bill for 1 day was completely outrageous, I would have hated to have to pay for 2 days!
The morning shift RT came in around 7 to suction her but (thank goodness) I had just fed her so she decided to wait till just before her next feeding to avoid being thrown up on. When the doctor made his rounds, Lily had only been suctioned once and been given 1 neb treatment which didn't seem to help. He said he'd come by around lunch time and we'd decide if she could be discharged. The RT just gave her a neb treatment the next time around saying she was going to need suctioned but that it could wait a bit longer. And the neb treatment actually helped more than the 2 times before. Around 2 the doctor just called the nurse and told her to go ahead and discharge us with a prescription for oxygen and the outpatient suction clinic as needed! I was so GLAD we weren't going to have to pay outrageously for another night at the hospital, but at the same time I was nervous about taking her home and not having the monitors to stare at to reassure me that she was okay.
Just before we headed home. She was happy and smiling again!
(Yet one more side story: Mommy's night at the hospital) So Lily had slept most of the day and evening and suddenly perked right up around 10:30 - 11:00 at night, so going to sleep wasn't really an option (I wish I got a picture of the 2 of us sitting in the rocking chair that night but it was easier said than done...lol). Around 11:30 she was suctioned out, and I fed her before putting her down for the night. By then it was probably almost 1 in the morning. I laid down in my chair (that pulled out to make a bed), but it took me a while to unwind from the day's events. It didn't help that every time her monitor would beep or she stirred at all, I would get up to check on her. I finally fell asleep around 2:20 (last time I looked at the clock before I fell asleep) and at exactly 2:30 two or three nurses came in the room and started moving things around near the bed by the door (it was a double room). One nurse came over to my side and said they ran out of rooms and had to start doubling up. Since RSV is super contagious (so much so that they didn't come in the room without mask, gloves, and a plastic gown type thing over them), they could only double us up with another child with RSV. So as I mentioned before, the rest of the night there was a 2 month old boy and his worried mommy in the room with us (side note to the side story: this 2 mo old boy weighed MORE than Lily! He was 16 lbs and looked more like a 6 mo old). So now I'm back in bed and every time his or her monitor went off I would sit up to make sure it wasn't her. And any time one of them cried I checked to make sure it wasn't her. I gave up at one point and tried to read the Ensign (perfect thing to put me right to sleep ... not because its boring ... just cuz I hear the apostle's voice in my head as I read and we all know they are so calming its hard not to give in to sleep :D). It was 4:45 when I finally fell asleep and Lily woke me at 5:45 to eat! It was SO hard to get up because I had finally relaxed but she wouldn't relent... sooooo I got up and fed her. At that point the mommy next to me was up for the day and the bathroom was on my side so I didn't want her to feel like she needed to stay on her side just because I was sleeping. Needless to say I got 1 hour of sleep! I actually felt pretty good after being up for a bit and got some reading in before the doctor came in to see me.
Well when we left the hospital, I felt like I had a nice buzz (and really probably shouldn't have been driving... but somebody had to get us home and Lily wasn't going to do it ... lol). Don't worry we made it home just fine, but the rest of the night was VERY VERY VERY difficult with 2 sick kids when I was sick also (yes RSV got us all... I started feeling sick Monday). At exactly 8, I gave Crystal Benadryl (doctor prescribed... don't worry I wasn't drugging my child to get her to sleep ... lol) and put her to bed! I fed Lily one last time and even though she had just woke up from a late nap, she was asleep by 9.... and SO WAS I!
But unfortunately, from 9 till 12:30 when Ty got home and came to bed, I dreamt about wires, tubes and monitors and needed to watch them to keep Lily safe. I would wake up and stare at both clocks in the room thinking they meant something important about Lily's condition. I kept thinking as soon as Ty got home, he could take over and watch them for me and I could sleep (yes I know I was delirious... must have been stress induced). I was still worried about her after Ty got home and woke him up to check on her several times that night. In fact I MADE him get up and take her in to get suctioned early the next morning (k well early for us ... lol).
She did pretty well the whole day but towards evening her wheezing had me worried. I was going to go get her suctioned at 9 just before bed so hopefully I could sleep without worrying so much (also so Crystal would be asleep and the neighbor wouldn't have to do a lot of 'watching'). But I called the suction clinic at the hospital and she had almost a 2 hr wait! Apparently every other parent with an RSV child had the same idea as I did ... lol. Instead we waited till Ty was home so we didn't get to sleep till around 2 in the morning ... ugh ... another long night!
Thursday morning brought us great news though! We had an appointment with the doctor (crystal still wouldn't wear a face mask ... I tried I promise!). He suctioned her out for us and then gave us a tube to manually suction ourselves so we wouldn't have to spend $200 a day for the hospital to do it. He also thought she could go without oxygen anymore (we did a trial run while at the office and she did great!). Even after the suctioning she was still pretty wheezy so the doctor tried another neb treatment, and it did WONDERS for her! The past few days we have completely weened her from oxygen (the doc told us we might as well use the rest of the oxygen we already paid for), and no longer have to suction her nose (thank goodness because she HATES it as you can imagine). She has about 2 neb treatments a day to help with the wheezing, but even her wheezing is almost non-existent! YAY! Today (Saturday) she is actually the healthiest person in the house and happier than she's been in a while! Crystal is just behind her on the healthy scale. Her nose hasn't run all day (you think that's not a big deal but seriously it was horrible and she's had it for SO long!), and she didn't have any coughing fits!
Unfortunately, Ty and I are NOT feeling ANY better yet! Ty has had a horrible cough for over a month now! Lately it seems to just keep getting worse instead of better! I on the other hand felt fine till Monday and was thankful the week before that I was healthy so I could try to sanitize the house and get this sickness OUT, but it finally caught up with me and now I'm struggling to find energy to continue cleaning... but I REFUSE to let this hit us again! Not only have I once again cleaned all the bedding and blankets and sanitized the toys, but there is now hand sanitizer in every room in the house! Everyone (meaning Ty ... lol) has been instructed to use it every time he .... well blinks pretty much ... and Crystal and I have been as well! Now that Lily is feeling better we are concerned about giving it back to her, so pray that we get better quickly!
