Caged...

The ride home from the beach was not much fun at all for any of us. Emily got sick again; we almost turned around and went back to the condo. We stopped frequently at some interesting places. Ethan was coughing his head off and his breathing didn't sound too good. We just wanted to get to Andalusia and we could figure out what to do then. Lucky for me, I was sitting in the back with Emily and got puked on a few miles away from the next city. I had been giving little E his inhalers like crazy but he needed the nebulizer. I don't have a car charger for it. We stopped at a hotel to use their lobby for a breathing treatment and their bathroom to get cleaned up. Poor Allison, she was just along for the ride. Emily was MUCH better after vomiting....thank you God!!! We were just going city to city to see what to do about little man. We thought about stopping in Montgomery to go to the hospital, but we were only 1.5 hours from home and our docs. So we kept on. Mark must have been still moving at airplane speeds because we made it home in no time. Em went straight to bed with no dinner and then woke up with 102.8 temperature. Awesome!!

I called the pulmonologist on-call at TCH and it just happened to be Ethan's doc. He told me to give the neb every 2 hours throughout the night to keep us out of the ER. That's just what I did.

Emily woke up feeling wonderful. Ethan woke up still coughing. I woke up tired. I think Daddy and Allison woke up fine.

I still wasn't happy with E's breathing so I took him to South to have him checked out. He was wheezing pretty good when we got there, so we went straight back and immediately a treatment was started, as well as more steroids given. I figured we could get a long neb and be back home in a couple of hours, just in time to take Mark back to the airport for his weekly trip. We were getting discharged.....I was signing the papers.....we were going home. Then he started grunting. For all you non-medical people out there - not a good sign. So we get another treatment. Pa is now taking Mark to airport. Still getting worse. Going to be admitted to the hospital. Mark cancels flight at airport and comes to ride with Ethan in the ambulance downtown. I go pick up Bella from boarding and head home to pack lunches, etc for girls. Ethan admitted to the Special Care Unit (ICU stepdown). Girls to Gia and Pa's for afternoon. Me to hospital. Mark leaves hospital to pick up girls and take them home for bed/school in the morning. I had to go by visitation hours in the SCU and was not allowed to sleep at the bedside. I finished my book, read the paper, met with the docs at 0245 and dozed for about an hour before I was kicked out again. I did get to hang out with my old ER buddies from 0630-0830 and then my old PACU friends from 1500-1630. His diagnosis was asthma exacerbation. This was triggered by a virus (pneumonia??) and was unable to be controlled with our home meds. He did great in the unit and was waiting on a floor bed forever. The SCU docs and pulmonary service decided to just leave him there since we would be discharged soon. He was definitely the favorite patient...and the only one able to walk around with all his monitors and yell "doctor" at the door. We did luck out and get an isolation room, we could close the doors if we wanted. No point though with all the assessments going on. Again, I was signing discharge papers and getting him dressed when he started grunting and retracting again. Docs were paged. More meds given. Dinner tray ordered. And then we left. Poor dude!

Sweet boy/bad asthma!

Breakfast of champions. He only ate his biscuit and a little bit of bacon. He fingerpainted with the rest. Albuterol in high quantities makes you CRAZY!!

Blurry pics because he was so busy. He was using the incline of the crib as a slide and then body slamming the bars. He was out of control. Really. There's a reason they had him "caged."

Bed space #8