I Hate the Hospital

Well, despite my efforts in this post here to convince the universe to keep us out of the hospital for the rest of the year, some perverse fate seemed to think it needed to squeeze in at least one more visit before the end of 2009.  And who was the lucky recipient of that several-day visit?

That's right, the little sicky herself.  She woke up with a fever from a nap Wednesday afternoon, and things just went downhill from there. Christmas Eve she got really bad, her cough and fever causing her so much grief she spent most of the evening laying on the floor at various families houses, not even tempted to run around with cousins.  We prayed hard that she'd be feeling much better by the next day.

Christmas morning dawned, and none of our kids woke before nine; a miracle in our house.  They don't sleep that late on a good day, let alone Christmas morning.  She rallied a little bit that morning, and at least seemed excited about her presents.  Most of Christmas day for her was spent on someone's lap, rather than doing any real playing though.

By Saturday morning she was back to feeling terrible, and got to a point where she was coughing every few minutes.  She was acting really unlike herself, and seemed to take awhile to respond to questions or instructions.  Her appetite was also non-existent, and since the fever hadn't broken after four days, we were obviously getting concerned.  We called an Instacare, and they recommended, based on her symptoms, that we take her to the hospital.  Joy.

Teag took her up there, and they started running some tests and stuff.  Her oxygen saturation levels were good, so they didn't have that concern at first.  They called in a respiratory therapist to give her a treatment, and took a chest X-Ray to make sure she didn't have pneumonia.  They figured out pretty quickly that she had a double ear infection though.  While waiting for some other tests, Dany fell asleep and her sats dipped to the low 80's.  Pretty much from then on, it was clear she was being admitted.

Over the course of the next three days, they began pumping her full of steroids, both liquid and inhaled, in order to try and open her airways to treat her "asthma".  Teag and I were both quite frustrated with this treatment, as she doesn't really have asthma.  She never uses her inhaler unless she's sick, she's never been slowed down, or been unable to participate in activities because of an inability to breathe, unless she's sick.  In fact, we both felt like they were telling us that she'd only been admitted because we'd somehow mismanaged her "asthma".

The steroids made her jumpy and restless, and they were so adamant about giving her the treatments that they'd wake her up multiple times in the night, despite the fact that she was so exhausted she could barely function.  They also gave her "roid rage", and she got really mean and unreasonable with both Teag and I.

Sunday evening Teag and I helped give Dany a bath, and getting the canula out of her nose perked her up for a few short minutes, as well as getting clean.  We let her watch some Signing Times on an Ipod.

Finally, by Monday the attending told Teag that they didn't really think it was asthma after all, and that the steroids weren't really doing any good. By then she'd been weaned down to .12 liters of oxygen, and had started talking more, and even eating slightly.  It was quite miraculous in fact, because the night before she'd been moved up to 1.5 liters.  To be able to wean so quickly was really pretty amazing. 

Thankfully she was able to come home that same night.  Only three days this time.  A doctor I spoke to on Sunday afternoon said that it was rare to admit a kid her age with RSV.  Dany's just lucky I guess.  So far, she's been to the hospital three times, has had RSV three times, and MPV once.  All before her third birthday.  Let's hope the third times a charm, and we're done with this forever.