Hospitals R Us

Well, here we are again. In fact, several of the nurses even said, "Ethan, what are you doing back here?" That is a sure sign that we are here too often. One even said that she remembered him and his sister comparing IV scars the last time. Yep! That would be us.


Now for the update on what is going on. Ethan was totally fine yesterday. By the late afternoon he started getting a slight runny nose, nothing out of the ordinary. When he went to bed he started getting this dry hacky cough. It was when that cough started that I began to get alarmed. I took his oxygen saturation at that time and it was 99. His sats were so good that I relaxed a bit and just thought that maybe he was starting to get a cold. I gave him his normal breathing treatment of Pulmicort and put him to bed. Ethan's cough continued to get worse through the night. Still not concerned about his oxygen levels, I gave him some cough medicine to see if that would help. It didn't and I took his sats again and they had dropped to 93. We were up most of the night with him moaning and groaning and coughing. When morning finally came, he had gotten even worse and his oxygen sats had dropped to 88. He also was starting to retract when breathing and his respirations were very fast and shallow, like he was panting. I gave him two more breathing treatments and called the pediatrician's office. They were able to get us right in. I debated going there first versus going straight to the ER, but I wanted the orders to come from Ethan's own doctor instead of just an ER doctor.


By the time we got to the doctor's office Ethan's oxygen level had dropped to 82. They immediately took us in and gave him a breathing treatment and hooked him up to oxygen. Ethan was obviously going to be a direct admit into the hospital, but he had to be stabilized before I could even transport him myself to the hospital and not have to be taken via ambulance. It ended up taking four breathing treatments plus oxygen to get him breathing well enough for me to drive him the five miles or so I needed to go to get to the hospital.


He has had a very rough day today. His heart rate is near 180 BPM because he is just working so hard to breathe. He is getting Xopenex every two hours (we don't use Albuterol). Ethan is still retracting while breathing and is having very shallow and rapid breaths. He is on 7 liters of oxygen and his sats are staying around 95 like that. The second the oxygen is turned off, his sats instantly drop down into the 80's.


Now for the reason for all of this. They did some blood work, a flu test, RSV test, and took chest x-rays. Everything has come back okay. Ethan does not have the flu, does not have RSV, and does not have pneumonia. Ethan had a very severe asthma attack (or is still having it) that was possibly triggered from a virus (the runny nose he started to get maybe?). Our pediatrician said that Ethan just has an atypical form of asthma and it's hard to treat because the attacks hit so hard and so suddenly. As a mom, watching your child struggle for every breath of air is almost just too much to bear.


Here is a picture of Ethan when he was first admitted into the hospital. This was when he was at his worst today.

He perked up when his sister came to visit this evening.

And finally, here is Ethan just a few minutes ago while he was listening to his music.