Yet another trip to the ER

It's been about a month since I've updated the blog -- my longest hiatus since January, so I have a lot of catching up to do. I'm afraid some of the details from the past month are no longer fresh in my mind, but I'll do my best to recount the past month. The week before Ken's birthday, Luke developed a frequent cough. I had upped his nebulizer treatments to three times a day, but as one afternoon passed, the frequency of his coughing had really increased, and sometimes his coughing fits were so severe, he threw up a bit. By the early evening, he was doing nothing but coughing, and it seemed as though he didn't have a chance to breathe air in. So around 8:30 p.m. we rushed him to the emergency room at Bryn Mawr Hospital. By this time he had a fever, too, and the fever seemed to be growing worse in the night-time hours. The good news is that once we got to the hospital, the frequency of his coughing had subsided, but we had made the right call in taking him to the hospital. He had a double ear infection, and after a chest X-ray and a test, Luke was diagnosed with pneumonia and RSV, a contagious respiratory virus.

Luke's first treatment was an hour-long nebulizer treatment -- essentially three doses back-to-back. He tolerated the mask for about 20 minutes, but then I had to request the same apparatus that we use at home. After his prolonged treatment, we had to wait for his X-ray to be taken. Then more waiting. Poor Luke never fell asleep through all of this. He was mostly in a daze, and for two hours I sang to him every song that came to my head, including Christmas carols. This must have been comforting to him because when I'd stop, he'd say, "Mommy, sing." In the wee hours of the morning, I had to help hold him down as two nurses inserted his I.V. for a steroid. That was truly awful. We were finally taken up to the pediatric ward and given a room around 3 in the morning, and Luke was, believe it or not, still awake.

Fortunately, he responded well to the nebulizer treatments, spread only two hours apart. He never required oxygen, either, and I was told that once he could tolerate nebulizer treatments spread out every four hours, we'd be able to go home. So in stark contrast to the 6 days we spent at Bryn Mawr Hospital when Luke was six months old, this time we were looking at a day, if we were lucky.

Luke finally fell asleep around 3:30 a.m., and slept until 9:30 or so. Because he tested positive for RSV, we were not allowed to play in the playroom on the floor. But we were allowed to take a couple of things back to our room, including some chunky Legos, as well as some videos. Thank goodness for Baby Einstein! But our distractions were still limited in number, and poor Luke kept saying over and over, "Go home. Go home."

Luke continued to progress as quickly as the doctors could have anticipated, and during the day his treatments were spread out to three-hour intervals. Armed with some new toys, including a magnetic ABC puzzle and a puzzle in which you "catch" magnetized bugs with a net, Ken relieved me around 4 p.m. or so. Luke, very much sleep deprived, slept the evening through, until we were discharged around 10 pm. Luke was absolutely elated to be home, and he and Ken played in the playroom until about midnight as his sleep schedule was completely thrown off.

In all we spent roughly 24 hours at Bryn Mawr Hospital, but it took Luke-- and me -- a week to recover. For the first several days he required nebulizer treatments every 4 hours, so Ken and I had to set our alarm clock for the middle of the night. Waking up at 4 a.m. to attend to Luke was reminiscent of once again having an infant in the house, and the interrupted sleep is truly exhausting.

Luke is now receiving pulmicort nebulizer treatments on a nightly basis, through March. If he develops a runny nose, then we add albuterol back to the neb and increase the frequency of his treatments to twice a day. We've made it through a month without a relapse, so we have three more to go. Ken and I keep hearing through neighbors and colleagues of other children who required nebulizer treatments -- and steroids -- with winter colds and viruses until age five, so we're hopeful that Luke, too, will outgrow this tendency for colds and viruses to develop into something much worse in his lungs.