Bilateral pneumonia

Our sweet, little Angel Baby has been fighting a cold/cough for a month now. Twice she seemed to be getting better but within a few days, she got worse. Friday night I knew it had gone long enough and she wasn't going to get better. See, I'd been trying to keep her out of the hospital- doing everything I knew to do to give her a chance to get better here at home. She never ran a fever, she just had cold symptoms. 'Mommy's intuition' told me that it was time to go. So, Saturday morning I headed to the local E.R. with her.

After a blood draw and xray, they ruled out RSV and diagnosed her with double pneumonia. Our pastor came for a short visit and prayed for our Angel Baby. Off we went in the ambulance to Children's Hospital in Little Rock. Because she was so congested her oxygen saturation was low and she needed to wear oxygen. Hubby was home with the other children as I prepared for a long day. I was sure we'd be at Children's for a few days while she fought off the pneumonia with the help of some antibiotics.

We got to Little Rock and settled in to the E.R. there. I took a few pics with my phone as we waited between doctors, nurses, assistants, admissions personnel, lab techs, a survey-taker guy and another xray tech.




After suctioning (not a pleasant experience for either of us!) her, her O2 sat. went up tremendously and she was taken off of the oxygen. She still had no fever, she wasn't dehydrated- she just had the double pneumonia. It leaked out (from the E.R. staff here in our local hospital- almost all of them know our family from our adoption story!) that mommy is a R.N. I try to keep that info silent when taking our little ones in for treatment. Sometimes it's received well, sometimes not. Anyway, the staff in Little Rock got word and actually commended me for the great job I did in taking care of Angel Baby. We waited and waited (for what I thought was our room) and I watched her O2 sat. She stayed good at 95% on room air and when the doc came back in she said we could go home! She told me she was confident that I would know whether or not to bring Angel Baby back if her symptoms got worse. Thank you nursing degree! :)

So, Hubby and the kids came to get us in Little Rock. We got home around 8:30pm (a 12 hour day for me!) and everyone fell in to bed. Angel Baby is doing better, this will be her 3rd day on antibiotics. The doc assured me she will be well enough to travel in a week when we make our trek up north to Minnesota and Wisconsin for the holidays. By the way, for all us southerners~ it's COLD up there!