Tuesday, September 1, 2009

pneumonia

Okay I thought I would update now that all is said and done. We had our first hospital admission since yale's heart transplant. I brought Yale into emerge on wednesday because I could definitely tell that he was working much harder to breathe, as well as bouts of lethargy. I could feel his little belly heaving when I would have him in the carrier. So as you could guess I was quite nervous when they brought the echo machine to check him out. Luckily it was not his heart and I was reassured his heart is working well. So with that fear aside I was ready to face whatever it was. to put it in the words of the resident his chest xray looked "junky" so they decided to admit him for pnumonia. Yale's sats were in the high 70's when admitted, and after some long screaming and choking during his xray he seemed to clear some of the gunk out because he could maintain higher sats for 15 minutes here and 20 minutes there.
After a talk with sick kids it was determined that Yale was to have a round of antibiotics IV for at least 3 and then oral. Well Yale didn't agree with that in having 11 pokes to try and get an IV he ended up with a line in his scalp, which he proceeded to pull out the next day. then another 7 pokes to try and get another line the doctors decided because they cannot get access on him, that he would have IM antibiotics... (in the muscle) as well as oral to cover the bases they would have had he been able to get them via IV. Yale slowly progressed to get higher O2 saturations thanks to loads of chest physio from me. I wanted him OUT of that hospital so during the day I did physio every few hours...
Finally we were allowed to come home on day 4 of his stay after much discussion with the team. Yale continued to have dips into the mid 80's and they didn't want to let him go. Luckily after calling sick kids Dr D said to let us go. Phew. So now we're at home...still doing chest physio until his work of breathing is much lower.... he still gets a few coughs out now and then...but we are all much happier to be home now.