Trip to the Hospital

Passing the time by counting "donuts" with daddy.
Grandpa get me out of here!!

Tis the time for the flu season

Fa la la la la la H1N1!

H1N1, meet Peter Vnak.

On Tuesday evening around 5 pm Peter woke up from his nap with a fever of 102.9 axillary (under the arm) and coughing. I gave him a dose of ibuprofen and dropped him off at my mom's house to play while Brian and I took the Tom and Joe to their swim lesson.

After swimming we picked him up and took his temp before bed. It was 99 something. Around midnight, we went to check on the boys before going to bed ourselves and Peter was tossing and turning and had a fever again. We gave him more ibuprofen and I rocked him for a while. I noticed he was breathing faster than usual. I laid him back in his bed and set my alarm to check on him through out the night. He continued to breathe fast during the night and had intermittent coughing spells.

When he woke up in the morning, he had a temp again was breathing fast and wasn't interested in eating. Not like our Peter Pie at all!! I called the clinic and got him an appointment at 12:45 pm. Brian's dad came over and watched Tom and Joe while I took Peter to the doctor.

At the clinic his temp was back up to 102.3, and was breathing approximately 50 times a minute and retracting. The doctor walked in the room and said, "It looks like he is having some trouble breathing." I said "yes, since last night." The doctor ordered a chest xray, cbc (complete white blood count), and wanted to give him an albuterol neb to see if that would help his breathing. His oxygen saturations in the clinic were 93-94% on room air.

Let's just say Peter hated the xray machine contraption they put him in, survived the blood draw and was pooped out by the end of his neb. That is when the doctor came in and said, "he does not look good." "He's wiped out." And I say, Oh no! I hear and use these words/phrases all the time at work and they never lead to anything good.

The doctor tells me that Peter is on the fence of going home or being admitted to the hospital for observation overnight. I sit and wait while she pages the hospitalist on duty to see what he thinks. In the meantime, cbc is normal and chest xray is streaky....typical of something viral.

A little while later, she comes back in to tell me that Peter will be admitted to Children's Center 5a and he will have a private room and they would like you there by 3pm...it was 2:30 pm when she told me this.

I think to myself, "you've got to be kidding me. We are going to the same floor I work on."

So I packed Peter in the car and headed HOME first to grab all the essentials. I called the charge nurse working to let her know that we weren't going to be there at 3 pm. While home, I laid Peter down for a quick nap because I knew he wouldn't get one in the hospital and then proceeded to get Tom and Joe down for their afternoon nap.

Brian and I packed up Peter and headed to U of M Children's Hospital. We arrived around 4:45 pm to our private room for the night. Peter was placed on a continuous pulse oximeter to monitor his oxygenation saturations. Upon initial assessment, his nurse stated that he was really diminished on the left side. (meaning she couldn't hear very well in his left lobes of his lung). He was also breathing fast and retracting in a couple of different locations. His heart rate was in the 170's for most of the evening and early parts of the morning until his fever broke around 3 am on Thursday. The nurse came in to obtain a influenza A & B swab to send for culture. They also started him on tamiflu.

Brian had left around 9 pm and around 9:30, I had gotten Peter to drink 5 oz of milk prior to falling asleep. He slept for a 1/2 hour and then woke up around 10 pm coughing to the point of almost throwing up and then had some audible wheezing. He was also again breathing fast, had a high heart rate and was retracting. The nurse and doctors came to look at him and ordered a neb. They were going to talk to the attending physician on to see if they were going to start antibiotics or just wait and see.

Around 11pm, Peter says to me "mama, poopies potty." I brought him into the bathroom and he went on the potty chair!!! Respiratory therapy then came to give him his neb. Peter got the neb and his lungs sounded better after.

The rest of the night consisted of attempting to sleep next to Peter in a pull out sleeper chair because he wanted nothing to do with the crib. I or he would just doze off and then someone would come in to take vitals, give meds, recheck temp, give more meds, or receive another neb at 4 am. I will say that there was a period of time to sleep from about 4:30-7am, but I was SO OVERLY tired that it was impossible to sleep!!

Thursday was a wait and see day. His temp max was 100.2 and was still breathing fast and had a higher heart rate 140's-150's. He also wasn't too interested in drinking or eating that much.

I spent most of the day convincing him to drink. Luckily Grandma McClanahan came and brought some Yo-J and a few treats which seemed to perk him up a bit. I also ordered him a powerade for dinner and he seemed to like it. Around 8pm, the attending came in and said it was up to us if we wanted to stay another night to watch him. I/we made the decision to go home so we could all sleep in our own beds and get the rest we needed to recover for this illness. They sent us home with a neb machine just in case. We arrived home from the hospital around 10:15 pm....just in time to take a shower and hop into my own bed!! I slept from 11 pm-8am with no interruptions!!!

Brian's mom came over in the morning to help out so I could sleep longer since I hadn't slept in 2 days!

We are on the mend, I believe. The rapid results of the influenza came back negative and we won't know the results of the culture for another week maybe. Tom and Joe were started on tamiflu as well. Joe has been coughing so we will have to watch him. It's CRAZY STUFF!!

Peter was a popular guy at the hospital. All the nurses, said he is not 22 months old!! He acts so much older and he goes poopy on the potty!

It was so funny, Peter's highlights were being able to go poop and calling for his nurse to come in and flush them down the toilet. After going, he would run out shouting for the nurse. He even hollered "Hey Sunshine....poopies potty!"

So that has been our crazy week....will keep you posted on the results of his culture.