This morning DH got Monkey out of bed at 5:45 AM. An hour later, he came upstairs and said, “Get up. We need to take him to the hospital.”
Half drowsy, I asked, “Why?”
“He’s wheezing.”
So I got up threw some clothes on, brushed my hair and my teeth and off we went. No one else in the waiting room, we were taken back into the Pediatric ER quickly. First thing, the nurse sucked out a sample of Monkey’s snot for RSV testing. The doctor listened to his breathing and he was indeed wheezing. They gave him an oral steroid and told us that he’d be going for x-rays shortly.
When the tech came by again she led us to the x-ray room where they had painted a rocket, space-themed mural on the walls. They asked DH to hold Monkey for the x-rays and put one of those lead jackets on DH plus a little one over Monkey’s nuts (there I’ve finally said it, “Monkey nuts” — sorry, I know I’m immature).
It was hard for Monkey to sit still for the x-rays but he and DH managed quite well. He only had to redo the profile chest x-ray again, thank God. On a side note, today was the first day Monkey said “stars”.
They determined from the x-rays that he didn’t have pneumonia and the RSV test came up negative but he was definitely having some issue. They concluded that it was an asthmatic cough but that he probably didn’t actually have asthma. Apparently this is common. The doctor warned us though that it could be RSV and not just be positive yet so he advised us to make a follow up appointment with his pediatrician tomorrow. They sent us home with a chamber, kinda like an inhaler for asthma.
I had a major deadline at noon today and was counting on the time this morning to complete my deliverable. NOON. We were discharged from the hospital at 10:00 so you do the math. I called work to warn them and they were sympathetic but asked if there was anyway I could get at least one thing done. Luckily, our daycare provider is lenient and since her son was already sick with a cough as well as every other kid in her care, she said I could bring Monkey by so I could my deliverable to my client. I ended up being about 2 hours late on it. Not too bad considering I was frazzled and could barely keep my thoughts together.
On the way to pick Monkey up this afternoon, his daycare provider called.
“Uh, you might want to take him back,” she said.
“Back? To the ER?” I asked.
“Yeah, he’s been coughing really hard all afternoon even after his breathing treatment,” she said as I heard Monkey in the background coughing hard and crying.
She suggested I might be able to take him into his pediatrician’s office before they closed. I called them and they said to bring him in right away. They examined him and gave him a different kind of breathing treatment (which btw, my daycare provider asked why they didn’t put him on in the first place because that’s what she thought they would have done).
So we’ve done two breathing treatments this evening with the nebulizer, one at the doctor’s office and one at home. Seems like the one at home has only lasted an hour and a half as I now hear Monkey coughing down the hall. We’ll see. Wish us luck. Good night.
