Friday Night @ CHILDREN'S E.R. !

Let me preface this post by saying that everything is good now...we were sent home with nebulizer treatments and a prescription ointment for his rash.

Here's how our Friday went...I called Brecken's pediatrician on my way to work in the morning to say that his symptoms have gotten slightly worse despite the Benadryl/Zyrtec. His right eye would only open about half-way because it was so swollen and red. She said she could see him at 11:15. Then D.J. and I talked it over, and with a slight disagreement we decided to see if she was ok if we would wait it out through the weekend and give the Zyrtec a longer chance to start working, as D.J. and I both have learned through our own experiences that allergy meds take a few days to build up in your system. With a little phone tag, she said she was comfortable waiting until Monday and confirmed that Zyrtec takes 4-5 days to fully take effect. WELL...Friday evening when we got home from work, Brecken seemed to be going steadily down-hill. His rash and puffy eyes were getting slightly worse and we started to hear a wheeze in his breathing. Needless to say, we canceled our plans for serving at Feed My Starving Children so we could keep a close eye on him. As his wheezing continued even after his recent dose of Zyrtec, we made the decision to take him in. We were nervous that if this was all allergy related, how would be able to tell if his throat was starting to swell? Is it possible that it could suddenly become too late and we'd be frantically calling 911? We didn't want to overreact, but at the same time, an allergic reaction can very quickly cause extremely difficult breathing. We quickly got a few things together, and jumped in the car to head down to Children's Minneapolis ER. We LOVE Children's (and learned the hard way after Brecken was born very premature and was eventually transferred to a closer hospital, that NOTHING compares to the excellent care provided at Children's!) Plus, our pediatrician has told us on more than one occasion that if it's after hours, don't mess around with Urgent Care, just go to the ER. In our minds, there was really no other consideration of where to take him at 6:15p.m. on a Friday night.

On the ride down, he continued to wheeze, and at one-point I was wondering if we would make it all the way down there or if we would need to call 911 and have an ambulance meet us! His wheezing got a little worse and I put my hand on his chest and could feel extreme inflation/deflation. I could tell he was really working hard to breathe. That lightened up some and I took a BIG sigh of relief when he started blurting out words again and was no longer looking at me with a sad face that said...mommy, what is going on?

Once down at Children's, we got in pretty quickly which was nice. When they closely listened to his breathing, they could hear a wheeze on the inhale and exhale BOTH, which usually means it has progressed from how it starts with just the one-way. Because of the wheezing, they gave him a nebulizer treatment and ordered a chest x-ray to make sure there wasn't anything they were missing like pneumonia. The nebulizer treatment really helped and after that you could no longer see the outline of his ribs when he was breathing - thank God! The chest x-rays came back looking good, so they sent us home with Albuterol nebulizer treatments and a prescription strength ointment for the rash. The medical resident student thought all of this was seasonal allergies. The supervising ER doc told us he thought the symptoms looked more to be from a viral infection than seasonal allergies. Who knows? All I know is that I'm happy it wasn't anything too serious and that he is breathing much better now!

Brecken was such a trooper down at Children's...we must have worked with 7-8 different people (2 nurses, resident student, actual dr, respiratory therapist, radiologist,etc.) throughout our short-stay and Brecken was GREAT with all of them despite it ending up being about 2 hours past his bedtime! The only time he gave us a hard time was when the resident dr. used the tongue depressor to look at his throat and then when they first started the nebulizer. When we went over to radiology for the chest x-rays, they had all of kinds of twinkling lights on the ceiling to keep his attention. I was like....awwwww, I'm SO glad we came to CHILDREN'S! All of the staff was soooo kid-friendly, even the patient registration gal that came into the room. Brecken normally shuts down around new people but he was actually showing all of his animal noises for them, even at 9 p.m.!

We got out of there around 10:00 and headed back home to Elk River. The night actually went really well all things considered, and he didn't need another nebulizer treatment until close to 6 a.m. when he started laboring with his breathing again. Now it's 7:45, Brecken is back to sleep - he is NEVER sleeping this late in the morning and D.J. went downstairs to go back to bed, since he got less sleep than I did. I'm wide awake now, so I thought I'd update everyone on the situation. I'm sure I'll catch a nap later, as Brecken will likely (hopefully :) take a long nap to catch-up! The other good news is that we don't have any plans for the weekend (that is a first time in a long time, and it feels GREAT!)

Oh... and are we regretting that we didn't take him into the pediatrician earlier in the day? Well I'm the one that wanted to take him back in...and I will even admit that I don't think it probably would've changed our scenario much. His breathing was perfectly fine until after 5p.m. so it's probable that she would've just said to wait longer for the Zyrtec to work. Who knows? It is what it is, and now we know everything was checked out and we have nebulizer treatments to give if necessary and he seems to respond very well to those!

Well I'm going to go find me some breakfast and probably coffee too ;)

Here's a couple pictures of Brecken in his hospital gown :(