Nathan In the Hospital

On Wednesday evening, we noticed that Nathan was starting to get a cold. Not a huge deal, he's had them before, but on Thursday after work, I went to pick up Nathan from Christian's parents' house and Jackie said that he was pretty sick and that there is nothing in his diaper all day. So I decided to take the next day off of work and stay home with him so he could feel better. When I got home from work, Nathan played a little bit and then fell asleep on my chest. While he was sleeping I noticed that he was panting like a dog, his heart was racing and he had a fever. When Christian came home, we decided to take Nathan to the InstaCare. When he was examined, they listened to his lungs and said he was working really hard to breathe and it sounded kind of coarse. They put in an IV (The single worst experience we've had to endure with Nathan so far.) to give him some fluid. Then they took an x-ray of his lungs (the second worst experience) and they didn't look too bad, but Dr. Plumb, decided that we should probably take him up to Primary Children's to make sure that it wasn't RSV. So we drove up there and checked into the RTU (Rapid Treatment Unit). We got the last room in the entire hospital. It was a double room, but they said they would only put another child in that either had or didn't have RSV, depending on whether Nathan had it or not. (The hospital is completely full because of RSV season.

Next, they suctioned out some mucus (the 3rd worst experience) and had it tested. It came back positive for RSV.

The rest of the night was a blur. Nurses were in and out every couple of hours, testing his temperature, listening to his breathing and suctioning him one more time. Luckily his oxygen saturation was good. It only dipped below 88 a couple of times, so he never had to have any oxygen. His heart-rate was always really high - when we first got to the InstaCare it was in the 180-190 range. When we got to the hospital it had dropped a little - about 160. Normal for him is 100-120.

Later the next morning, they moved us into a single room and we just watched him really closely. Poor little guy so was exhausted he cried every time someone touched him.

By the afternoon, he still hadn't wet any diapers, so they talked about keeping him another night. Not too long after that, he had a really full one and his fever came down. So we were able to go home around 7:30.

He's still a little on the groggy and ornery side. He also has an ear infection, so that doesn't help.

Through it all, we are so grateful for the our family and friends and their wonderful support. We've had so many phone calls and visits and prayers in our behalf. This could have been so much worse and we are so lucky that it wasn't.