Hospital Recap

I thought I would share Riley's little hospital story with everyone since I keep having to tell it over and over again...plus a little update. On Wednesday morning about 4:30am or so Riley woke up and was sneezing and coughing. He told me that his throat hurt everytime he coughed but everything else seemed normal. Then when we got up around 8am he told me the same thing that his throat hurt when he coughed. I decided around 9:00 or so to call the doctor and get him an appointment. They scheduled me an appointment for 11:45. Riley ate a little bit of breakfast and watched a little bit of his movie and just became more and more lathargic and I was having trouble keeping him awake (which is never the case with Riley). He then started to breathe a little heavier and then as time went on he began to wheez. Then about 10:30 I was starting to freak out because he was saying very off the wall things and was started to moan while he was half asleep and at this point I could see his check totally caving in everytime he took a breath. This all happened within about an hour and I was pretty much just counting down the minutes until his doctor's appointment. About 10:45 I decided I couldn't wait any longer and I just went to the doctor an hour early for my appointment. I signed him in and told the receptionist that I knew I was an hour early but he is getting worse very quickly. They said they would let Dr. Hoover know and I sat down in the waiting room. About 2 minutes later the nurse came out and got us and took us back. (I LOVE Dr. Hoover by the way for anyone who is looking for a family doctor...he has a pretty great nurse practitioner too!...For those of you that do not know, my sister-in-law Laura is his nurse practitioner) Dr. Hoover was in the room as soon as he got done with his current patient and they tested his oxygen level and did a breathing treatment on him. He didn't have much response from the treatment and his oxygen level was way too low for a 2 year old, so he sent us over to the hospital and told us that we would have to stay over night.....so we headed over to the hospital.

I was pretty scared at this point because his breathing kept getting worse and I was worried about his oxygen level. I did feel a little better though that I was in a hospital and not on my couch! They put an IV (ouwie jug as Riley called it) and that was great fun! The first day they attempted to get him to take all his meds orally and that was completely unsuccessful! He was throwing up everything he ate because he was having difficulty eating and breathing at the same time and all his medicine either never made it down or came back up within minutes. At this point he was feeling a little better after they got some fluid in him and got his oxygen level up a little bit, but he still was really struggling with his breathing. The chest Xray showed bronchitis and not pneumonia so that was good. Dr. Hoover came in to check on him the next morning and he still had not made much progress. He pretty much listened to his chest, watched his breathing and said see you in the morning.....great another night in the hospital! I think the worst part about trying to sleep in the hospital was that Riley's IV went off every single hour because they can only set them for an hour for a child because they have to monitor closely the IV for children. So, every single hour it would go off and we would have to call the nurse to come fix it. Great fun!

The next day they changed his medicine and did everything through the IV. This made a world of difference. I just want you all to picture my 2 year old child who is very active and pretty much a maniac at all times....got it in your head? Now picture my child hooked to an IV cart.....now one last image....picture my 2 year old maniac child, strapped to an IV cart, on a ton of steroids! That was interesting. He was literally running around everywhere and we were chasing him nonstop and constantly trying to prevent him from ripping out the IV. He did manage to break the IV at one of the joints, but he never fully ripped it out. The nurses did however come in I think 3 times to add more tape to his IV to try to keep him from ripping it out. He already had it pretty much under this temporary cast with all kinds of tape but they just kept having to retape and add more on. Friday morning finally came and we got to come home with again more steroids for him, an antibiotic, Singulair, and breathing treatments every 6 hours. They still don't know if it was actually bronchitis or if it was allergies or asthma or the combination of the two. We have to continue to give him Singulair every day in case it is allergies. He was literally in the middle of a corn field on Tuesday night, so this may have either pushed him over the edge or caused it all to happen. I guess we will find out soon enough if he really does have allergies or asthma.

Right now Riley is done with his breathing treatments unless we see something like this come along and is almost done with his antibiotic and steroids. The breathing treatments made him really crazy so I cam glad we are done with them, but the steroids he is still on is making him an absolute crazy man! He is uncontrollably hyper, but he is still sleeping so that is good. He goes for a follow-up appointment tomorrow, so hopefully everything will sound good in that little chest of his....I do mean little as he was weighed in at a whopping 27 pounds. He has actually lost weight this summer....I am not surprised since it is hot, he won't eat, and is outside playing nonstop! One day he will catch up! That's it for now....I think this is my longest post yet!

Did you say that was a crib or a trapeze?

This was when we were attempting to get him to take his oxygen but he really didn't want to have anything to do with it. We mainly got some oxygen in him when he was sleeping....that is usually when we got a good breathing treatment in him too! I would also like to point out the IV in this picture. Notice how it looks so tidy and not too much tape...

Aunt Laura came to check on me every night after work to make sure I was doing okay. Zach brought the boys up later to visit. Aunt Laura and Dr. Hoover took good care of Riley!

This was one of his calm moments while reading LOTS of books with Daddy.

You can sort of tell in this picture that the IV is taped up another few inches up the arm and not just on the cast thing. You also can't see it but there is probably about 3 more layers of tape than the previous picture. I am just so thankful that he did not totally rip it out because the first time around was bad enough.

Finally Riley is released from the IV and he is ready to go home. As soon as they took the IV out he was ready to go. I was still talking to the nurse and he knew we told him that we were going to go home. he hopped down off the bed, grabbed his balloons and his puppy dog that he had gotten, and literally sat at the doorway. He just sat at the threshold of the doorway and looked down the hall until we were ready to go. It was the cutest thing. The nurses just kept walking past and laughing at him. It was so cute! You could tell that after 3 days in the hospital, he was ready to go home!