Hospital Trip Details

This post is mainly for my records. I will quickly forget all the details of this horrifying hospital trip with my two week old believe it or not. I'll blame it on mommy brain.

On Sunday night before the snow/ice storm, Annabelle started sneezing more, sounding very congested in her nose, and coughing a little dry cough. Throughout the ice storm we kept using saline drops in Annabelle's nose and suctioning to no avail. By Thursday I was making Emma Catherine's follow up appointment and decided I would get Dr. B to take a look at Annabelle too. I'm so glad I made the appointment. That evening Annabelle's cough went from the little dry cough to a hacking wet cough. Dr. B checked out both the girls on Friday and said to call back if Annabelle started coughing more frequently. By lunch on Saturday Annabelle was coughing several times an hour and I noticed that she had a little more difficulty breathing, so we headed back to see Dr. B. After listening to Annabelle and watching her breath, she asked me to take a look at Annabelle's chest. Her skin was pulling in just below her rib cage every time she would take a breath. So Dr B calmly told us to take Annabelle to the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta ER at Scottish Rite. They gave us orders for an RSV test and an xray, gave us directions, and called ahead to let them know we were coming. Dr. B reassured me that she really thought Annabelle would be just fine, but wanted her to be observed over night just in case.

Just a side note, my nephew, Robert, had RSV when he was 6 weeks old. It is a nasty bug for infants that breath 90% of their oxygen through their nostrils. It starts out just like any other cold, but can quickly move to the rest of their little respiratory system. So I knew how serious RSV could be for Annabelle. Robert also suffered with slight asthma following his bought with RSV. And from what I knew, once a baby has RSV then all subsequent colds go straight to their chests. Hence my silent tears when RSV came out of Dr B's mouth.

At the ER, they followed Dr B's orders plus Craig, the amazing respiratory therapist, did a nasal wash. He shot saline in one side of her nose and almost simultaneously suctioned it out the other side using only a bulb syringe. Annabelle didn't even know what was going on until it was over and then she could breath so much better that she didn't really care. Note: this is not nearly as easy as it sounds, so I don't recommend trying it at home - just ask Bo.

One tid bit we learned about RSV in the ER is that you can shed it for 21 days and keep contracting it. So if you ever get it,.try to keep your hands washed and bulb syringe clean.

After all the testing was complete, Dr. Delgado entered. I like to call him Dr. Worthless =) He told us the xray was clear, but the RSV test was positive. He said, oh it is just a virus and there is nothing we can do but let her heal with time - there was some truth to that statement, some. He listened to her chest and watched her breath. Then said something to the effect of, oh she looks fine and sounds clear so you guys can go. He did take a moment to call Dr B and let her know what he thought, basically that she should have never sent us in. Dr B asked to speak to us. She asked if Annabelle seemed to be breathing better. With Dr. Worthless standing right there I felt a lot of pressure to say "oh everything is fine". I didn't say that exactly, but said something like "well, she is breathing a little better since the nasal wash". Dr B asked if she was still pulling in below her rib cage. I responded with a definite yes. So she said to watch Annabelle closely throughout the night and do breathing treatments for her every 4 hours. To which Dr Worthless chimed in to say only do the breathing treatments if she needs them. Really?Then Dr Worthless also told us reasons to bring her back as follows:

1. pulling in of the skin between the bones of her rib cage

2. high fever

3. if she started turning purple and blue

I kid you not.

Dr B said she would send a sleep apnea machine to our house to monitor Annabelle's breathing. We worked with the nurse and the machine's company for the rest of the afternoon. Long story short, we found out at 11PM that night we weren't going to get one.

So we took Annabelle home from the ER with a new bulb syringe in hand - like that really helped at all the past week? And trust me, I have used a bulb syringe several times on Emma Catherine with lots of yucky, snotty success, but it is different with a two week old.

Around 9PM I decided to take EC to bed and nap with her until Annabelle's 11PM breathing treatment. Mom and Bo watched Annabelle, so I was actually able to rest after since I did not sleep at all the night before.

We did Annabelle's 11PM treatment and then she nursed. To me Annabelle seemed to be having a little more trouble breathing, but I thought that it probably had to get worse before it got better. My mom thought of a brilliant idea to use EC's new tent and the humidifier to make a more humid environment for Annabelle and I to hang out. We were hoping it would help loosen the mucus that was clogging Annabelle's respiratory system, because I wasn't able to suction anything out of her nose even though you could hear all the gunky build up. Mom sat up reading on the couch next to the tent, while I sat up in the tent - dozing off and on - while holding Annabelle at a 45 degree angle to let anything that loosened drain down her throat.

By her 2AM feeding, I noticed it was much much more difficult for Annabelle to breath. She also had a fever of 100.7 - anything above 100.5 if fever in an infant. After a reassuring yes from my mom and a call to the nurse line, I decided we would take her back to the ER.

Luckily the children's ER was completely empty around 3AM. The nurse came out to do triage, took one look at Annabelle's rib cage, and personally carried her to the back while urging me to walk a little faster. When the nurse carried Annabelle through the back doors all the other people behind the desks looked up with that look like - uh oh. I didn't notice this, but Bo did.

Before we knew it, we were in a mother of all hospital rooms with 8 people standing around Annabelle doing various things. They promptly found Bo and I chairs - hint, stay out of the way - at the end of the bed. I did get to mention that she had RSV, but the doctor still insisted on doing blood work for cultures and various other things. Plus he added a urine cath and a spinal tap (lumbar puncture). All routine items when infants have fever (this was all done on EC at 5 months), but scary none the less! Plus they had to cath her twice because the nurse messed up the first time. The respiratory therapist this time was Larry and I liked him as well. He did treatments and in between them took time to calm Annabelle as well as reassure her frightened parents at the foot of the bed. He also started Annabelle on oxygen. Then the doctor started the "routine, just in case" antibiotics. I'll be honest, they seemed to help get rid of her fever. Plus, we are pretty sure Annabelle contracted the same virus Emma Catherine and Eric had and they both had to have antibiotics. After all that, we were moved to another room for monitoring until they found us a room upstairs in the PICU.

The next few days were kind of a blur. Constant prayers being sent from Bo and me. Drs, nurses, techs, respiratory therapists were in and out all the time and never at the same time. Not to mention the beeping and alarms from every machine in that room, which are worse at night because she was sleeping deeper and breathing more shallow. We were constantly altering Annabelle's position when her blood oxygen level dropped to low. Increasing, decreasing, increasing her oxygen supply while we were trying to get her back on just room air.

Finally I just gave it all up. Not gave up, but gave it to God because obviously there was nothing I could do. I think God uses times like this to remind us of things that we may have forgotten.

Annabelle's fever finally subsided. The cultures came back negative for a bacterial infection the same morning her IV infiltrated, so that came out and got to stay out - yay!! They wanted to test for two specific viruses. One would have been transmitted from me during delivery if I'd had herpes. We all know I don't have that, but they didn't ask me. Those tests came back negative. Annabelle started just breathing room air again and they stopped suctioning her nose as much. Finally, we got to go home!!

Of course we walked through the door to see Emma Catherine and the first person she wanted to kiss was Annabelle =)

We are still doing breathing treatments and her lungs aren't clear more than a week later, but she is acting well and eating again! The little princess gained a pound and a half in just 3 weeks! Here's to seeing a quick end to this winter/cold and flu season! Anyone with me on that?