Our Rease has been sick for a couple weeks now. It started out with what I thought was a cold. She had a slight fever and started getting a cough. Then she started to get really tired. When she comes home from school and falls asleep on the couch I know that she is really not feeling good. She usually doesn't want to miss out on anything by sleeping so when I found her on the couch with her coat on and wrapped up in a blanket sleeping I knew she was sick. I kept her home from school for a couple days and she also skipped her ski lesson Saturday to try and get better. By Monday of the next week though I figured she was fine and sent her to school again. She came home that day and told me that she fell asleep in class and still didn't feel good. Her cough was still lingering around but her fever had gone. I thought she just needed a couple more days to get her cough under control and she would be fine. So again on Tuesday I sent her to school - kids get colds and I figured she just needed to go on with a normal day and get back to her normal routine. By Tuesday night though I could tell that she still was not fine. By this time it had been almost two weeks that she had complained about not feeling good and all she wanted to do was lay on the couch and sleep. And her cough seemed to be getting worse. I let her sleep on the futon in the loft that night so she didn't keep Rhen up coughing. I was started to get a little worried about her so I went up and laid by her that night. She did spend a lot of the night coughing and I realized I needed to get her to the doctor.
Wednesday morning I took her in to see Dr. Erickson and wondered if she may have pneumonia or something similar. He did a couple tests on her including testing her oxygen saturation level and a lung treatment. Her sat level was in the low 90s/high 80s and he told me that normal levels are between 95 and 100. He told me that she definitely has pneumonia and that if her saturations were any lower then she would need to be hospitalized. I was a little surprised to hear that but was glad she would be able to be treated. So her gave her an antibiotic and kept us there for a little bit longer just monitoring her levels. After about 30 minutes of her levels being right around 90 he said we were ok to go home but told me to keep an eye on her throughout the day and night. If she started having a harder time breathing then he wanted me to come back and get tested again.
At this point I started to get pretty worried about her. We picked up her antibiotic from the pharmacy and headed home to let her rest and try and get better. I remembered that my dad has a pulse oximeter that he uses at the dental office when he works on sedated patients so I drove down there and borrowed it from him. I figured I might as well keep an eye on her levels as much as possible. That night and all the next morning her levels slowly dropped and stayed below 90. Thursday morning when her oxygen never got above 90 I realized I needed to get her back in. Dr. Erickson was out of the office that day so we saw one of the other doctors in the office and when she hooked Rease up to the monitor, she couldn't get her level above 86. She immediately put her on an oxygen mask and told me that we needed to admit her to the hospital right away. I was getting pretty nervous for my little girl once I knew that the doctor was so serious about it. We had the option of going to Primary Children's in Salt Lake or the Riverton Hospital that has an extension of Primary's in their children's unit. Luckily Riverton Hospital is right down the road from our house so that was a great option for us.
The doctor told me that Rease needed to be transported by ambulance so she got them called and on their way while Rease continued to stay on her oxygen in the office. Once the ambulance got there, they were all so sweet to Rease and were very kind about getting her settled on the stretcher. I could tell she was a little nervous to ride in the ambulance but I was able to ride with her so it was all ok.
She was already started to get some color and energy back with the oxygen mask on. She had been so deprived of oxygen that her little body was fighting so hard just to breathe and function for the past few weeks.
We got to the hospital and were in the ER for a few hours while they did all sorts of tests and x-rays on her. One of the tests they did was a swab test through her nose and she hated that so much. It did look really uncomfortable and I felt bad that she had to go through all of that!
They took her down to the x-ray room for a chest x-ray to see where the pneumonia had settled and how extensive it was.
You can see the cloudiness in the left lung in this x-ray - part of the cloudiness is her heart but near the bottom corner is where the fluid had settled and was causing the pneumonia.
Josh brought Rhen over to the hospital to see Rease and hang out with her for a little while before she got admitted to her room.
After a couple hours we finally did make it up to our room and got Rease all settled in. With it being an extension of Primary Children's the restrictions up on that floor were pretty strict. No one, even siblings, under age 12 were not allowed. So Rhen got to hang out for just a few minutes before she had to go home. Rease was exhausted though and once we got settled and had her dinner, she was ready to sleep. They had her on 2 liters of oxygen and were working hard to keep her oxygen level at 95. The 2 liters barely did that and they kept her on that all night and into the next day. The nurse told us that they would start to taper off the oxygen slowly but for now they wanted her to be able to rest and just get better. Rease finally had the first good night's sleep that's she's had for a while and was able to get some good oxygen for her little body. We had so much help from our kind neighbors and friends with the other kids and Josh and I took turns staying with her at night. That first night I went home and picked the rest of the kids up and we all slept in our own beds while Rease and Josh were at the hospital. The next morning, I farmed them all out again and switched spots with Josh while he had to go to work for a few meetings during the day. I was so glad to be able to be with Rease and hang out with her while she was there.
The second day they started Rease working on some breathing exercises and told her that the big key is that she needed to start taking deep breaths to be able to clear out the fluid that had settled in her lungs. They had her do lots of different blowing exercises to help with that. This machine was one that she had to suck in and hold her breath as long as possible. This was probably the hardest thing for Rease. She hated doing it because it hurt her to suck in and made her cough really hard. But the nurse kept telling her that was what they wanted and the coughing was what would break up that fluid. We had a goal to do 10 different breathing exercises a day and mark them off when we did them. Even though Rease hated it, she was a good sport and made sure she got all of them done. Between the doctors and nurses coming in and all her exercises she was doing, she did a lot of sleeping as well. I was so happy to see her resting and trying to get better.
Rease also had a lot of visitors and notes sent in. Greg gave her this cute little bouquet of flowers.
Papa and Grammie came to visit and hang out with her for a while.
And even though Rhen couldn't visit, she drew this cute picture for Rease and had Josh bring it over for her to put by her bed. She's such a good sister!
She had a visit from our friends the Chalks and this cute note for Taya Chalk who couldn't come and visit but wanted her to know they were thinking of her.
And the Hammers were so great to help out with the other kids while we tried to juggle our time at the hospital with Rease. Izzy sent this note with Melissa to give to Rease with a cute little stuffed animal.
After that first full day in the hospital the nurse told Rease that the next step would be to get up and walk around. Since she had a respiratory illness they wouldn't let her leave her room yet but they wanted her to be up and about in her little room. They gave her lots of activities to try and do but the one thing she really liked was drawing on the window with dry erase markers. She sat with Josh and did this quite a bit that day as a way to get out of her bed and be up for a while. It was a really cute and fun idea. That day they were also working on getting her oxygen tapered off and had gotten down to a little over a liter of oxygen by the end of Friday. It seemed like it was good progress.
Saturday morning the nurse came in and told us that Rease was given permission to walk around the halls of her floor as long as she kept her mask on. She also got in the shower that morning and we got her all clean and feeling better. We took a few walks that day around the hospital and I could tell that Rease was starting to feel much better. Her oxygen was down to about 1/2 liter and she was doing really well. Saturday afternoon the doctor came in and said that if she could get off oxygen completely then we could go home that night. I was excited about that after being there for 3 days but I could tell Rease was a little nervous. She didn't want to go home and get sick again. I told her that the doctor would not let her leave if he didn't feel like she was ok to go home. She seemed to be ok about that and said she would do her best to keep up with her exercises so she could go home.
After a long afternoon that turned into a late night on Saturday, she was able to get off her oxygen and the doctor finally came in a cleared her to be able to go home. She had made so much progress and was finally off her oxygen and happy about it! She was released from the hospital Saturday night about 10:00 pm and we were all once again back under one roof. We were so happy to have our Rease back home and mostly happy that she was so much better!
I feel so lucky to have had such good care for our girl. I broke down a few times while we were in the hospital feeling like I was a terrible mother for letting her get this sick without getting help. I was so grateful though that we did get her in and that she had amazing care! Mostly I'm just grateful to be Rease's mom and to be able to take care of her and be with her while she was sick. She is one special soul and I'm glad she's doing better!
1 comment:
Poor thing! Glad she's doing better- what a trooper!
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