Is this ever going to get any easier? What are we doing wrong?!
If you’ve been following James’ story, you know that James has been in the hospital a couple of times for respiratory distress. We’ve been trying our best to care for him at home, but sometimes it feels like we’re not doing enough. We are frequently suctioning his nose and mouth as much as needed to try to manage his secretions the best that we can. We’ve been giving him breathing treatments. Sometimes he even helps with his breathing treatments.
Yesterday morning at about 5 am James was breathing hard and heavy. We just couldn’t get his breathing under control and he had a little bit of a fever. Stacy put in a call to the pediatrician and he wanted us to come in so that he could take a look at James. He did not like the way James was breathing so he had him admitted to the hospital for respiratory distress.
While they were doing the admission assessment, James’ sats were a bit low so they put him on oxygen. Because of all of his heavy breathing, James’ belly was a bit distended. Stacy vented the excess air from his belly by using a syringe (without the plunger attached) to his g-tube extension. They did a chest x-ray to see if he had pneumonia, but his lungs looked clear. Because of the fever, they started him on a 10-day round of antibiotics (Cefdinir) in case the fever was caused by some sort of infection.
An ENT (ear, nose, and throat doctor) came by to look at James and thought that overall he looked good. The only concern the ENT had was the managing of the secretions. “We know doc, we know. We’re trying to keep up with the suctioning, but sometimes it’s just too much!” If we could just find a way to manage the secretions better, maybe James wouldn’t have so many respiratory distress episodes.
Fortunately, James was only in the hospital for the night. This morning they felt that he was stable enough to go home, so home we went.
