Happy to be Home

Childrens ER- 2:25am- We're watching the Olympics
Kathryn's swollen face and neck
View from the intermediate care room
With Tom the Bear (a gift from Tom her ambulance driver)
Playing with toys
Puzzles and Pudding
I just told Kathryn we're going HOME!!! Off the IV
One last nebulizing before going home
Kathryn's nebulizing sticker chart and adorable cookie bouquet from the Zs and Cs

I'd much rather be posting about Tommy's Birthday or JW Tumbles or our trip to Madison, but instead we'll skip ahead for now to what happened this past week to Kathryn. On Friday the 12th we went to ECFE and her nose started to drip. That evening we brought the girls to the Ps while we went out to eat and to see Macbeth at the Gutherie.

The next morning we went to Madison for the weekend- Kathryn had a a cold and her usual deep breathing she gets while sick. In the car though she naps- which is good! Monday back at home she was pretty out of it all day- just wanting to sleep and not eat anything or really play, but by late afternoon her mood had improved so we thought the end was in sight. She went to bed pretty early and woke up around 7:30pm- Kathryn had been sleeping in our bed and from the street lights we noticed her face and throat very swollen and her chest and back was aking crinkly sounds.

Urgent Care closes at 8 so we tried calling nurse lines and Tommy got through and she said to go to the ER and asked if we needed an ambulance. Tommy got Kathryn in the car and threw together a quick bag of snacks, drinks and Kathryn's pink blanky.

At Methodist Tommy texts me to say they're all checked in and just waiting for a doctor. He calls and then says that they're going to take her by ambulance to the Children's Hospital. Then we had a flurry of phone calls to the Bs and the Ps- trying to figure out how I could get to Tommy and Kathryn and what to do with Eleanor. Tom came over and picked us up, dropped me off at Methodist, I picked up the van and headed to Children's and arrived around midnight. It's all kind of a blur for the next couple of hours- Methodist had put an IV in, she had blood tests and chest x-rays done and doctors and nurses and lab people coming in and out.

Her vitals all came back good, but the x-rays showed that air was somehow outside her lungs. The on-call doctor in the intensive care unit happened to be a pulmonologist and the ER doctor had experience with lung emergencies so between them, a variety of other people and asking us a million questions they started piecing together what was happening to Kathryn. They decide to put her in the intermediate care floor and we get into the room around 4am. It's confirmed that she has RSV and becasue of her breathing history probably asthma.

She has a thing called pneumomediastinum--
Airflow in the lungs gets trapped because of mucus build up and then it explodes into the space between the lungs and then starts to break up and then the skin starts feeling squishy or crunchy. It's small air bubbles called crepitus.

That's why she was very swollen - looking at her x-rays you can see where air shouldn't be. Her body will gradually absorb the air itself so there's not really a treatment. She's had a lot of people feeling her chest, neck, and back wanting to feel the air. I think some food service people even asked to feel it. (Ok, not really.) So basically if we touched her she would make a Rice Kripy sound.

Tuesday- Tommy and I stayed with her most of the day, she was neb'd every 2 hours and had oxygen being blown on her. In the evening Tommy went to the Ps to sleep and be with Eleanor.

Wednesday- the effects of the steroids and the albuteral were pretty intense- Kathryn did a lot of yelling. Mary watched her for 1/2 hour or so while I went to a required meeting about asthma. In the afternoon she was moved to a regular floor!!! (by wagon- that made her very excited) That night I brought Eleanor home and slept at home and Tommy stayed at the hospital.

Thursday- neb'd every 4 hours and it was decided if she could go the night w/o oxygen she could go home soon. Tommy stayed at the hospital, around noon or so I brought Eleanor to the Ps and joined them at Children's.

Friday morning - got the OK to go HOME!!!! I don't think I've ever seen Kathryn so HAPPY! I was trained in how to neb her at home (I've done most of this before with clients/students so I was a quick study.) We left around noon.

So throughout the week she had daily x-rays (which she hated- and b/c I'm pregnant I couldn't stay in the room with her), was on an IV (we named him Fred), had to wear a monitor that read her oxygen levels (she was always taking it off) watched a lot of TV, played with doll houses and did puzzles (Kathryn is a puzzle PRO!) She ate a lot of mac and cheese and chocolate pudding.

There's a lot more to say (these are my quick notes) but she's home now and doing GREAT! Our experience at Children's Hospital was awesome- they took great care of Kathryn. And now that we have some answers hopefully she'll never get that sick ever again.