Another Asthma/RSV/Pneumonia Update

Whew! What a week! We just got home this afternoon with 4 yr old Hope. 6 yr old Grace came home yesterday. 8 yr old Liberty ended up with an ER run herself on Tuesday evening, but came home, not needing to be admitted, with a much less serious case of pneumonia (and accompanying steroid burst, antibiotic, and albuterol nebs).

Gracie ended up losing her first IV, then taking 3 tries to get the second one in, and almost lost the second one the next night. Two nurses worked very hard to save that IV. They were awesome.

Hope ended up only needing to stay in the PICU for 24 hrs, and she transferred out onto the main 'floor' on Saturday- into a double room to wait for her sister. So, then, instead of running back and forth to opposite sides of the PICU, we were running back and forth to opposite ends of that floor of the hospital. We certainly got our exercise!

Hope is our asthma child who usually responds right away to her meds, and really hasn't needed them very often. She's never dropped her stats like that before, she's never been hospitalized for her asthma (though she was in the hospital with RSV at 6 wks old), and has never even needed oxygen for her asthma. She's only had 2 or 3 ER visits, at which she has always responded to more meds, and come home.

On Saturday morning, when she was moved out of Intensive Care, I actually expected Hope to fly out of her new room before Grace even made it out of the PICU, as Grace has always had a harder time with it all.

Grace ended up in the PICU for 3 nights, a day earlier and a day longer, than Hope. When we went to sleep on Saturday night, she was still on a lot of oxygen and continuous nebs, and by Sunday morning, she was off of continuous nebs, down to every 2 hrs, and down to 1.5 liters of flow with regular O2. She had flown right past Hope on the road to recovery.

Hope was still on 4 liters of flow at 80% pure oxygen that morning, and then she took a bit of a turn for the worse, dropping her stats and needing to go up to 7 liters of flow at 100% oxygen, which is close to as much as they could give her, and there was talk of a possible return to the PICU. Her cough had gotten really junky and she wasn't statting real great, despite that very high level of O2, and she ended up needing suction. That was almost as scary for her Dad and I (and her sister, who was now sharing a room with her) as it was for her. No fun at all! After that, they started doing physio therapy with the vest treatment designed (locally!) for use with cystic fibrosis patients. We tried to get her to talk or sing during her treatment, because it would be so cute and silly, but she just refused to see it that way- until her last 2 treatments on Wednesday, stinker.

Grace continued to improve, tapering down to getting meds every 3, then every 4 hrs, and tapering down to 'room air', and after getting through a night with no signs of distress, was able to come home on Wednesday, 7 days after being admitted to our local hospital only to be transferred down to Children's. She's still got some secretions to work out, so there will still be some coughing, which could still be contagious for RSV, so we will remain homebodies through another weekend.

Hope took much longer to wean back down off of the oxygen, which both surprised and worried me. Yesterday morning, when the pulomonologist came in to check on her, he told me that the nursing & respiratory staff had been concerned as well about how long she was requiring so much oxygen, but he knew that, especialy where RSV is concerned, sometimes it can just take a long time, a waiting game we never wanted to play. She finally tolerated a baby step down, and then another, and another, until she was on room air, and wheezing much less. She still has a bunch of secretions to clear, like her sister, and you can hear it in her cough, but even so, she sounds 110% better.

Our biggest problem now might be weaning the girls off of all the Sprite, juice, jello, & popsicles they could drink & eat, and the quitting satellite TV cold turkey...

And the knitting? Well, I had planty of time to finish my Lacy Baktus and then some, but did I? Nope. Almost, but, nope. I was distracted, and when I took the time to just sit, I was exhausted, both mentally and physically. It's almost done, and I have a new hat pattern to publish, when the fog clears. There will be time for knitting, probably this weekend, while we're busy doing nothing but keeping our coughs and our germs to ourselves.

Happy knitting (& breathing!)-

ali