On Thursday night, he spiked a high fever (102.7 to be exact) and I debated running him to the ER that night. I was home alone with the boys and Riley was already in bed, so I gave him some tylenol and put him to bed. By Friday, his temp had come down a little, but he was coughing pretty badly. I went to work and tried to get him into the pediatrician. Of course they closed before I got off work! So I headed to Urgent Care. The nurses took his temp there and it was 101.6 and rising. They also placed him on oxygen because His saturation was in the high 70-low 80 percentile. Ideally it should have been in the mid to high nineties! I never even saw a doctor at Urgent Care, the nurses sent me straight to the ER. They wanted to transport him by ambulance, but I had Riley with me and they wouldn't transport him. When we arrived at the hospital, they took him right back and put him back on oxygen. The pediatric specialist said she thought it was pneumonia, but wanted to test him for RSV and some other things as well as get a chest x-ray.
He got his x-rays which showed he had pneumonia in his right lung. After that, they placed an IV to start him on fluids and antibiotics right away. If you've never seen an infant get an IV, it's a horrible experience. Because he was just 2 1/2 months old and his veins were so tiny, they turned off the lights and used a light to shine through his skin so they could find a good vein. Unfortunately, after having me hold him down for 10 minutes and trying to place the IV, they couldn't find his vein. He ended up bleeding all over the bed and they brought in another nurse to try and place it. It took another 5 minutes of him screaming and me holding him down before they got it in. Like I said, horrible...
Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever seen?
After the IV was placed, he was moved from the ER up to the pediatric wing. They gave him a tiny hospital gown and got us settled in for a long night.
The antibiotics started working pretty quickly. By the next morning he had regained some of his color and was in a better mood. He had lost his voice during the night so he had the most pathetic cry...it just broke your heart to hear it. They closed the pediatric ward for the weekend due to low population, so he was then moved to the adult ICU for the rest of the weekend.
Doesn't he look cute in his hospital gown? He'd been on the antibiotic for 24 hours here and was starting to feel a little better. He was even able to flirt with the nurses a bit!
When we were finally able to bring him home, he still had to be on an antibiotic and was out of daycare for a while to give his immune system a chance to build back up again. He's just now starting to regain his appetite now, more than a week later. He lost a pound while he was in the hospital too.
A week later, he has regained his voice and his appetite is picking up. He wants to eat every 2 hours again, making up for the lost calories! His trip made the last week in January a crappy one...we were more than ready for February to arrive!
