Asthma/RSV/Pneumonia Update

Stopping home for a few minutes to grab some clean clothes, shampoo, hair brush, you know, things you don't think of grabbing when you take your sick child into the doctor...

**our local hospital was not comfortable keeping Grace, as she was requiring 100% oxygen at 10 liters and continuous nebs, they were talking possible intubation, etc... so she transferred to St. paul Children's (Minneapolis had no room!) My dear friend, Traci, who came to babysit ended up taking Hope in to the local ER the next morning, and riding in the ambulance with her when they transferred down as well... (leaving the other 4 with her teenager, as my teenager was away at a soccer mini-tournament).

They both have asthma, and they both now have pneumonia, and they both tested positive for an active RSV infection. Not fun.

Both girls are still at St. Paul Children's Hospital. Hope (4 yr old) only spent one day and night in the PICU (pediatric intensive care unit) and was doing well enough to move out onto 'the floor' today. She is still on quite a bit of oxygen, but only requiring breathing treatments every 2 hrs at this point. Grace (6 yr old) is still in the PICU, still on continuous albuterol nebs and atrovent every 6 hrs (down from 4 hrs) and quite a bit of oxygen. Her respiration rate has come down a bit, which is a sign of improvement- when we got there she was in the 50-60 (breaths per minute) range and is now in the 30-45 range (it fluctuates a lot as she moves around in bed). They had tried to turn down her O2 a tiny bit this morning, but had to bump it back up as her stats started dropping after only minutes. They have both had IV steroids and antibiotics since they got there (Grace transferred Thursday late afternoon/evening and Hope transferred down Friday late morning/noonish...) and Hope is responding quite well (she's our little trooper!) Grace is responding, just not as fast as we'd like to see...

The hospital has wireless internet access, but the filter blocks anything having to do with blogger, and twitter, but not facebook- don't ask me why, but that's where I've been updating... friend me if you'd like to stay informed, or if you'd just like to be my friend...

Gotta run,

ali