Sigh...
We were only home for two weeks! She seemed to be coming down with a cold and it didn't seem like a big deal except she had a few epic snot bubbles. Thankfully we have a fancy suction machine and I kept her nose cleared out. But after dinner, she really seemed to get worse fast. Once we couldn't get her O2 to stay above 90% (or 80% even), I packed her up and headed to the ER at 11pm.
I figured we would have to wait for awhile, but they took a look at her and sent us right back to the Pediatric ER unit. They immediately put her on oxygen and then transferred her up to the PICU. She looked so tiny and helpless in the kid's bed they had in the room. And needless to say, I am incredibly grateful we had the monitors and decided to bring her in because even in the PICU, she got worse before she got better.
The flu and RSV tests both came back negative, but she tested positive for HRV (Human Rhinovirus) and ENT (Enterovirus). I was relieved it wasn't flu or RSV until I started googling and found out the HRV-ENT combo usually had a longer hospital stay. :(
The doctor's warned us that she would likely get worse before she got better and that day 4 would be the worst. And they were right - they ended up cutting off her feeds on day 4 because it looked like she might need to be intubated. But this girl is a fighter and managed to pull through with just the high pressure air and respiratory treatments.
Though her IV difficulties are still present. They ended up needing to put an IV in her scalp and it looked incredibly sad. But it held like a champ! Unfortunately they needed to draw blood a few days later and opted to try the scalp again. The guy in the middle has about the same look on his face that I did. Surprisingly, she didn't seem to mind it any more than a normal blood draw (not that she liked it by any means!).
Theresa had been super bummed that she couldn't be there for me when Natalie was in the NICU, so she planned on coming up in March to hang out with us at the house. Instead, she got to be there for us while we were in the PICU. She's such a sport about hanging out in hospitals. As long as she has chocolate cake, she's happy. Unfortunately, the hospital didn't have any...
So I got to make the fantastic box mix one again. :)
It's hard to tell from this photo, but it's Theresa holding her. Natalie loved getting in some snuggle time with her Aunt Theresa!
I know she looks a little under the weather here, but this was on the upswing!
Still surrounded by lots of equipment and still has the high-pressure oxygen support, but this is in the PICU overflow, not the main PICU. It means we are the least sick of the PICU patients. As opposed to when we came in and were pretty high on the sick list. I think my heart broke a little the first time they referred to her as "critically ill". :(
She finally got well enough to move to a normal pediatric room and got taken off of the high pressure air. She looked much more comfortable without the giant nasal cannula. She was doing much better, but she had to stop having the reflux and brady events (just like in the NICU) and start gaining weight before they would let her go home.
Apparently respiratory distress makes babies work extra hard to breathe and they end up burning more calories than they usually would. Which explains why she was losing weight until her breathing got back to normal. They tried fortifying her feeds to get her extra calories, but that made the reflux much worse. So we had to slowly up the volume of her milk to get her weight to start going back up. Poor girl just couldn't win.
But after 48 hours off of supplemental oxygen and no more "events", she was finally cleared to go home! Our poor little girl had been in the hospital for 16 days this time. And to think, google had made me believe that 8 days was the standard and that had sounded long...
I brought in Henry's "bad guy" hat for her to wear because it honestly did feel like she was stuck in jail again. I was beyond ready to bust her out and get her home. Plus, the nurses thought she was the most adorable jail bird ever. :)