Little Sickle.

Wow, what a weekend.

On Wednesday, I took Cooper into the doctor because of persistent diarrhea (like 3 weeks). We had been transitioning to cow's milk per doc orders which I thought may be the catalyst so we switched back to formula, but it didn't go away. The doctor agreed that the cow's milk was probably upsetting her stomach and told us to slowly introduce it again once things were back to normal. I told him, at this appointment, about a plethora of snot, and he attributed it to the weather. On Friday, we woke up to a normal (if normal means occasionally scrubbing poop out of the floor and off the walls of your toddler's room--I'm waiting until I'm not fuming mad about this anymore to write about the Axman...-and then once getting to the gym, cleaning yet MORE poop off the baby). We came home from the gym and Cooper pretty much just broke down. She was screaming, screaming, screaming, didn't want to eat, and could not be consoled. It was early, but I decided to just try and lie her down for a nap. We went upstairs to get her ready only to find that her diaper rash was the worst it has EVER been, (this girl has had a rash pretty much since she was born), it was bleeding in places and I could tell that it was extremely painful. I tried to doctor her up the best I could, took her downstairs, and held her on my chest until she went to sleep. While lying on my chest I noticed that her breathing was faster than normal. I thought once she got into a deeper sleep it would slow, so I took her upstairs and laid her down in her crib (this was at about 1:15). I continued to check on her throughout the nap, only to find that it was still very fast, if not faster. When she FINALLY woke at 5:30!! I took her temp and she had a fever, her breathing was fast, and guess what, another disgusting/weird diaper was waiting for me. I decided to call the Twilight Clinic to take her in before we got into the weekend. I hadn't given the nurse any information about who we actually were when she asked for the symptoms, I started with the ones I was most concerned about, "fever, persistent diarrhea, really really terrible rash.." and tagged on, "her breathing is a little faster than usual". The nurse responded with "You need to take her to the emergency room". Really? The emergency room? We've already been there once with this little lady and I'm sorry to say that the first thing that popped into my mind was the WHOPPING bill received weeks later... She persisted that we must go to the emergency room and not the clinic. Not entirely sure what I should do, we called dad and discussed it. Meanwhile I'm putting together EVERY carseat we have because I had disassembled them ALL to wash earlier in the day, the pads still wet. Tyler decides to call Wanda, a nurse friend down the street to see if she could come up and help me decide, but she was working. I called Leslie to inform her we wouldn't be coming to dinner because of all this, and she handed the phone over to her mom, Leah, who is also a nurse. She asked me exactly how fast, and not knowing what it was supposed to be, reported the number I had counted in between phone calls. over 60. Leah then told me she definitely needed to be evaluated and noticed quickly that I was freaking out. She told me to get off the phone, put my hand on her tummy and do another count. With 17 seconds LEFT to go in the minute, I was at 60. (Later I found that the normal rate is 24-38) I got one complete carseat together, put Cooper in it, strapped Axl into the car sin carseat and headed toward the ER. My mind was racing on the way there, but came to the conclusion that there was no way I was going to be able to handle both kids in the ER. I couldn't get in touch with anyone that would be on the way so I still just headed for the neighborhood across the street from the hospital, knowing a few friends who I hoped would be home. The first driveway I pulled into picked up the phone right then. I informed Sarah I was at her house and would it be ok if Axl came in to visit for a while, ha. She agreed, I shewed him in with a sleeve of girl scout cookies and a cup of juice and Cooper and I went on our way. They got us in pretty quickly, got a pulse ox (I don't really know how to use that word, so I'm using it like this, ha) of 90 or 91. I thought that sounded pretty good, but the nurse told me it was low for her. After listening to her lungs and reporting that her breathing was labored, raspy, and tight, the doc told me she suspected pneumonia, ordered a chest xray and a breathing treatment. We did the breathing treatment, went in for the xrays, and got a new pulse ox of 97 :) The doc came back in, told us he saw infection on the xray. "Does that mean pneumonia?" "Yes, we caught it early". Coop gets a dose of Rocephin through an IV :( and they take blood to culture. Now he says we need to decide if they should admit her for the night for observation or send us home. He says his fear is that we get home and in a couple of hours we're right back in when the breathing treatment wears off. "How do you feel about this?" I say, literally, "You are the doctor, I am not making this decision, it's all on you." I was already feeling terrible about downplaying the issue at hand and was not about to make another mistake at the cost of my little baby girl. He says he would feel more comfortable if they contacted UK Children's Hospital (as we were just in an ER and couldn't be admitted there). He orders Tylenol for her fever, and then we wait for the RSV test to come back. The nurse says, "after that, we'll be calling the ambulance." AMBULANCE? what?? The doctor says we go by ambulance so they can monitor her oxygen level, keep the IV, and give her a breathing treatment en route if needed. Cooper, for real, was a trooper through all of this. She rarely cried, and waved at every nurse that passed the door. However, she did not want to go to sleep. She got in a total of about 10 minutes before midnight. RSV test negative, and after a while, the ambulance was there to pick us up.

It wasn't until we got there that I realized they were simply sending us to another er for them to determine whether or not she needed to be admitted...We got there atleast 2 hours after the breathing treatment (enough time for it to "wear off" if it was going to) and Cooper was great. With the exception of being over tired, she was peachy. It was determined after a while that we were going to be able to go home. Doctors were in and out, but all of them were saying good things, so I called Tyler when one of them told me it would be about 30 minutes. This was probably at 2am. Tyler woke Axl and came to pick us up, only to realize that we were going to be forgotten about for another 2 hours, while we were only waiting for instructions on how to use the inhaler they were sending us home with. (these doctors were thinking more along the lines of an asthmatic type thing versus pneumonia...looking at the same x-rays...) So after a long two hours for Tyler (Axl was running laps INSIDE the car in the parking lot) we were able to go home and finally get some rest. We had a prescription for prednisone, an inhaler, and instructions to go to the Twilight Clinic the next day.

We went in the next day and the third doctor had yet another opinion, but I felt like the conversation I had with him was the most productive I had had in the last 24 hours. The RSV test came back negative, but he told us there are many more viruses that cause bronchiolitis in babies. He said the reason the other doctors probably ruled that out is that these viruses are typical of mid-January. He named Cooper the last baby of the season, gave another Rocephin shot and sent us on our way, with instructions to go in AGAIN to our pediatrician on Monday for a final ear check.

Dr. Boarman determined that her ears were healing well enough that we didn't need a third shot and made even more sense of the whole situation. He agreed with the Twilight doctor and went on to explain that if bronchiolitis has progressed to the point of completely blocking off some tubes, areas of lung tissue will be cut off and show up like pneumonia on an xray! He said all of the doctors were "right", so that made me a little less frustrated. If I understood everything correctly, this means Cooper does not HAVE asthma. If in the future she continues to react this way to these viruses, this could possibly develop into asthma. Sounds better to me. :)

so....we've only had to use the inhaler one or two times a day, and Cooper is doing very well. It is safe to say that I never want to have to watch one of my children get an IV again; though much props to the nurse, she was awesome.

Glad you're feeling better, sickle!