Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Baby has RSV -- From now on, I call the peds. pulmonlogist FIRST

I trusted my instincts and didn't fill the Biaxin Rx...and took #2 son to the Peds. Pulmo instead.

Good thing I did. She listened to him for about two minutes, then promptly ordered a nebulizer treatment, chest X-ray, and tests for RSV and Flu. She said she heard "wheezing in the front and crackling in his back."

Sure enough -- four hours of my prego self dragging the toddler around the massive hospital later -- we got confirmation. He has RSV.

A few hours later, the results of the chest X-ray were back. Apparently, he's had it for a while (so the peds. missed it) because the irritation and inflammation in his lungs is pretty bad.

I don't know why I alwaya question my instincts. I could have called this two weeks ago, before he started the Omnicef. Now I'm really mad that I didn't!!!

Up until yesterday, he was pretty happy during the day, just the spikey fevers at night, along w/rapid, shallow breathing. And the cough, of course.

But last night, the breathing was really bad - and his fever didn't shoot up. Today he's been positively miserable, and -- frighteningly -- not responding well to treatments. He was about 48 resps per minute during his nap, but then he shot up over 50.

I gave him a DuoNeb treatment, and an hour later, he was still at 58. So I did another treatment (per the PP) and gave him his Orapred a few hours early. He dropped into the forties.

Now, less than two hours later, he's well into the 50's again. I'm going to do another treatment, and if he doesn't drop by at least 10 breaths per minute, I'm paging the PP again -- no matter how much of a pain in the ass I appear to be!!

I so don't want this baby to have to deal with being in the hospital -- he's not even 20 months old, and it would be so scary for him. But at the same time, I almost wish they would take him. It's so frightening not knowing what's going on with him. He was at 100% oxygen saturation yesterday, but today -- who knows? I don't own a pulse-oximeter. (Wish I did.) Plus, I'm supposed to be doing nebulizer treatments every three hours around the clock. That's a lot of work. Thank goodness we can sleep in tomorrow (assuming the kids let us).

So...that's the tale so far.

Happy freaking Thanksgiving, right?

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