WEEZY!

Does anyone remember this?  And this?

Well, guess what?  We have ANOTHER hospital story to add to the growing list.

On Thursday, the 29th, Katie came down with a cold after school.  It was just an innocent little cold.  Friday came and went and it didn't change.  On Saturday, Katie seemed okay.  She didn't have any boogies a-leaking, so we decided to go to a birthday party at a local park.

I began to notice that Katie was not herself.

Like Inspector Clouseau, I deciphered the clues as best I could:  not running on the playground, not socializing with her friends, not eating whole bags of Pirate's Booty in a sitting, not finishing the coveted juice box.  Ahhhhhh, now veee are gitting somewhere!  My hypotheesis:  It meust mean she iz just tired freum not getting good sleep, yew see!

And just like Inspector Clouseau, I was wrong.  Yew fewl!  Swine, asthma!

The party was over and we hopped into the car to head home.  Katie fell asleep in her car seat.  It was then that I noticed that all the color had dropped from her face and with every breath came a deep and hissing wheeze.  Merde.

When we got home, I carried her upstairs and laid her in my bed.  I gave her a "steamie" treatment and decided to let her nap a bit.  We continued to check on her for about an hour and her breathing was not improving.  So, we decided to take her to an Urgent Care Center (kinda like an ER).

They immediately saw us in due to Katie's "shortness of breath".  Her oxygen levels were hovering at about 87 (normal is 98+).  If your body does not get enough oxygen, it begins to shut down the non-essential things - which basically means everything except your heart and brain.  So, we were quickly ushered back, given a room and she was immediately put on a continuous albuterol mist to open up her airways, an oxygen flow to supplement and a dose of steroids to relieve the inflammation in her lungs.

She quickly recovered her pallor and began to smile and interact - and drink chocolate milk.  Always a good sign.  But after about 2 hours of continuous albuterol mist & oxygen, she was still hovering at about 89 oxygen level.  After a quick chest x-ray (which showed just a bit of gunk in her lungs) and a quick puke on the xray techs floor (bye-bye chocolate milk), the ambulance was called to truck Katie over to the Emergency Room at Children's Hospital.

As most of you know, we only have one vehicle and I had it with us at the Urgent Care Center.  In order for us to get home from Children's, I needed to drive the truck to it.  That meant that Katie had to ride in the ambulance all by herself.  She was quite nervous about it, but after she met her driver and her nurse she decided that she was good to go.  I followed right behind all the way to the hospital - I could see her through the back windows, she even waved to me.

We spent another two hours in the Emergency room at Children's.  Again, on a continuous albuterol mist and supplemental oxygen.  And again, she did not recover her oxygen levels.  We were told that she would be admitted.

So, upstairs we went.  We got our own room.  Yay.

All in all we spent Saturday night, Sunday, Monday and all day Tuesday in the hospital.  Her lungs eventually opened up, but her body just wasn't sucking in enough oxygen for the docs to feel comfortable sending her home.

It was a LONG three days.  I was not prepared to spend that much time in the hospital.  I had no toys, no snacks, no extra clothes.  Katie went through waves of boredom, depression, stubbornness, and extreme happiness bordering on hyper (albuterol has that side effect).  Her mobility was limited because she was hooked up to a pulse oximeter as well as having oxygen tubes up her nose.  She wasn't allowed to leave the room because the docs thought that her lung infection was viral and she wasn't allowed to walk around the room because she couldn't be off the oxygen.

She also didn't like the food.  When you have food allergies, hospital food is even more plain and gross looking than normal.  She wouldn't eat any meal they sent down.  Instead she lived off of saltine crackers, chocolate pudding, red jello, milk and popcorn.  I also spent a fortune buying Legos at the hospital gift shop.

That's not to say that her experience was all bad.  She got two stuffed animals from the Urgent Care Center, she had a home-made blanket waiting on her hospital bed (made by Project Linus), and hospital volunteers brought down a bucket full of toys/DVD's/Games for her to play with.  And all the doctors and nurses and respiratory techs were so patient and understanding with her....even in the middle of the night when she was, uh, not her best.

In the middle of all this, Mikey came down with the cold too.  Early Tuesday morning Huzbend noticed that he too was wheezing.  They hoofed it (literally) to our pediatrician's office where Mikey was diagnosed with the exact same thing as Katie was at age 2 - restrictive airway disease.  R.A.D. is really just another way of saying asthma.  He was sent home with steroids for lung inflammation as well as albuterol.

Both Katie and Mikey are doing fine now.  I think we're past the worst of it.  They both still have this nasty sounding cough, but at least there is no wheezing.

There's really nothing that we can do different to stop these flare-ups from happening since they come with the cold season.  We just have to continue the daily maintenance medications for Katie and hope that Mikey doesn't start down the same asthma path.  Forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

You said it, Yoda.

Wheezing, coughing, asthma.....the dark side they are.