9/24/06- Day at The ER

Cedie awoke at 4am this morning with the same coughing spell she has had the last 2 mornings. However, this time was much worse. She was dropping her O2 sats and crying. Her nurse came and woke me up at 5:30. Together we tried everything I could think of to get her to stop coughing. By 6:45 I called the doctors office. She was just so miserable and I ran out of ideas. She can't take any OTC meds like benadryl, dimetap, etc. because of all the other meds she is on. Ofcourse, the on call nurse didn't know Cedie and all she could say was take her to LeBonheur..
So, we arrived at the ER just before 8am. They took us strait back. Ofcourse, by this time she wasn't coughing. They hooked her up to their monitors. Her O2 sats were 96-99. Her respiratory rate was good and her heart rate was alot lower than it had been at home. However, they took her temp at it was 102.6. So, they took blood samples from her foot via an IV (which blew before they could secure it- very Cedie). They took her to get a chest x-ray (see picture above). The thing they put her in for the x-ray looked like a torture devise! She is sitting on bicycle seat (actually she is stradling it). The tube like thing surrounding her is keeping her arms up straight. She didn't fight it too much (she was too wore out from the fever) but she sure sounded pitiful with her whimpering :-( After that they had to do a catheter to get a urine sample. Basically, they were just mean to the baby! The results from all of this told the docs that she has an elevated white blood count and tracheaitis (sp?).

Therefore, they gave her two shots of Rocefen (sp?) - one in each leg. They agreed to let her go home with us as long as we saw our pediatrician on Mon. and kept our pulmonology appointment on Thurs. We did not walk out of the hospital until 3:30 (7 1/2 hours later!!). But atleast we all walked out together.

Its a good thing they let her go home b/c although she was exhausted, she refused to sleep while we were there. Every time her little eye lids started to drift down, she would shake her head "no". Sometimes she shook it so hard that it shook her whole body. We got home just after 4pm. I fed her and gave her another breathing treatment and then she was out. She didn't not wake up until 6am the next morning.