Wow! What a holiday! Katie started getting sick last Thursday. We took her in to see her doctor on Friday and he said she has RSV. He gave her an inhaler and said it was fine to travel with her to Louisiana but that she would get worse before she got better. He said with her being a little older, she was not likely to be hospitalized with rsv although it was possible.
Saturday wasn't bad. I thought she was getting over it. Sunday was terrible. She woke up with a 102 fever and wouldn't eat or drink all day. Fever stayed around 102-103 all day, she was very lethargic, and she only had 1 wet diaper all day long. We were just about to take her to the new pediatric ER in Alex for dehidration when she drank some pedialite, had several wet diapers, and her fever went down. I probably should've trusted my mommy instinct and brought her in anyway.
Monday she woke up even worse. Fever 103.9 after 24 hours of motrin and tylenol alternating every 4 hours. Her fingers and toes started looking blue, and she was grunting when she breathed. Praise God for my sister in law and my nieces' pediatrician. She saw us right away and I found out Katie was sicker than I thought.
She was breathing 80 breaths per minute (40 is normal for her age), and she sounded (on the stethescope) like she was still wheezing and struggling to breath. The doctor described her as sounding "tight." She immediately said Katie should be admitted so we headed right over to the hospital. They ran tons of tests and determined she has pneumonia and she was moved into the pediatric ICU! I could tell it was bad because everyone was kind of frantic. Just all over the place with 3-4 nurses doing stuff to Katie all at once.
Her heartrate was up to 221 (normal for her age is about 95-140), her fever was still 103.8 (under the arm), her white blood count was 2500 (normal is 400-1200). When I asked what that means, they said it means she's a lot sicker than she looks and her body is having to work very hard to fight this off.
After an iv for fluids, steroids, and 2 antibiotics, tubes in her nose for oxygen, nebulizer treatments (1 per hour for 3 hours then every 3 hours since then), blood work to track her white blood count, blood preasure, heartrate, oxygen levels, and breaths per minute all being montiored 24/7, her numbers finally showed some improvements over night. From 8:30-about 1:00am Katie had nurses doing "something to her" almost constantly!
When her doctor came in to check on her today, she said Katie looks much better. She said she usually doesn't come in at night to check on her patients, but she was very worried about Katie last night. She said she had some sort of "bands?" or something that could be very, very bad! And because Katie's vitals were all over the place she was afraid Katie was going to "crash" on her last night. Praise God for taking care of her and how well she's responding to the medicine. I know the doctor feels good about her improvements or she wouldn't have told me all that. She said she was trying really hard last night to stay calm so we wouldn't panic.
It turns out it never was RSV. My doctor never tested to confirm that, he just assumed based on her symptoms. And apparently it's not uncommon to not test to confirm RSV. I think I would like to find the one doctor who is thorough enough to do confirm her diagnises, at least when it's a "major" illness like that which could potentially hospitalize the patient! He said she would get worse before she got better so when she got worse I just thought that was supposed to happen with her RSV, when really what she needed was to start antibiotics for the pneumonia on Friday when we took her in the 1st time.
Today has been WAY better. Her heartrate is back down fluctuating around 140s-160s. Her oxygen levels are ok but she has those oxygen tubes helping with that. She's getting enough oxygen on her own, but she struggling to breathe it in because of the inflamation. Her inflamation number for her lungs was 24 last night and down to 23 this morning. 0-5 is normal but the doctor said she's seen it as high as 150! I didn't think that was a big enough improvement but the doctor sounded pleased with that. She's now breathing around 40-60 breaths per minute. And her white blood count this morning was down to 1300! And she's eating (a little), drinking (a decent amount), and having wet diapers. And she's talking a little and trying to play a little. Slowly getting back to herself.
All this is with ivs, fluids for hydration, meds, and nebulizer treatments so I'm sure they would be higher without all the help, but she's responding to the treatments and that's good. We're still in the ICU. Don't know how long we'll be here, but she can't go home until she's off all the "stuff" and doing well on her own for 24 hours.
Thank you all for your prayers and words of encouragement. I'll try to post updates on here as we get them.
1 comment:
So sorry you guys are going through this. I know how scary it is to see your helpless child hurting and not be able to help them. Sam ended up in the ER in New Orleans last year on christmas day. It was scary. She also had RSV last year. So rough to deal with. You guys are in our prayers, and we will pray that little katie recoveries very quickly and is back home with you guys safe and sound.
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