The day after Thanksgiving last year James got really sick and ended up spending 10 days in the hospital recovering from pneumonia. This year we hoped it would be different, but sadly it wasn’t. On the drive home from Thanksgiving dinner, he started having the same symptoms that he did last year. This post is going to be a bit longer than most, but I want to fill you in on everything that happened over the past week.
Friday, November 26th
On the way home from Thanksgiving dinner at Stacy’s folks house, James started to have some breathing issues, which persisted throughout the night. He just couldn’t keep his sats above 90. Stacy got up around 6 am Friday morning and gave James a breathing treatment used the cough assist, but this just seemed to make things worse. Now he couldn’t keep his sats above 85. Stacy put a call into home health to have a nurse come out. Fortunately, the nurse on call was close by and got to us pretty quickly. She listened to him and said that we needed to take him the ER. Since we had been through this before, we pretty much knew what the nurse was going to say and had already started to pack.
When we got to the ER, they went through their usual assessment. Because of his breathing issues, they had a respiratory therapist come down. The respiratory therapist gave James a couple of breathing treatments; one was Albuterol and the other was Atrovent. These seemed to make James worse and caused him more distress so they gave him Prednisone.
Because he seemed to be getting worse, they decided to admit him. We got him settled into his room at around noon and by 2 pm he seemed so much better. He had been on his belly in the bed and we were getting a lot of gunk out of his nose and mouth. He was on a little bit of oxygen and was given IV fluids because he hadn’t peed yet.
James’ pulmonologist works out of this hospital and he stopped by at 3:10 pm, listened to his lungs and gave James a diuretic called Lasix. He talked with the respiratory therapist and James was given Xopenex breathing treatments every 2 hours throughout the evening and into Saturday morning.
Saturday, November 27th
On Saturday they started James on another breathing treatment, Racemic, which really loosened him up. The Racemic was given every 8 hours, in addition to the Xopenex which they continued to give every 2 hours.
Chest x-ray showed that there might be pneumonia so they started him on Clarithromycin (every 8 hours) and Rocephin (once a day).
A cardiologist requested an ECHO & EKG along with a blood gas. He didn’t think that his heart was a secondary complication, but just wanted to rule it out, just so we were covering all the bases and not missing anything. Some of the tests that they ran on James showed that he had Rhinovirus and Enterovirus. They are not sure if the pneumonia is bacterial or viral, but they said the antibiotics he was on should kick it either way.
Monday, November 29th
Just in case you were paying attention, no I didn’t skip Sunday. Not much happened. They just continued following the course with the breathing treatments and antibiotics.
On Monday they did an echocardiogram (ECHO) on James’ heart like the cardiologist recommended on Saturday, just to rule out any issues with his heart. The ECHO results showed no problems.
The pediatric doctor on the floor told us that whenever we feel comfortable to take James home, we can get him home. Her only recommendation was to keep James in the hospital for another couple of days with the high dose of antibiotics that he is getting through his IV because it is a higher strength than what we would go home with.
Tuesday, November 30th
James’ neurologist stopped by to talk about stopping the Keppra he is taking for his seizures/spasms because it is really not doing anything at such a low dose. We’ve been weaning Keppra for the past week or so, so at this point the neurologist thinks we can just stop. He said that we should talk in another week to discuss starting Banzel, which is another anti-seizure medication.
Wednesday, December 1st
They stopped the IV antibiotics and switched to oral antibiotics: Cefdinir and Predisolone. That meant that we were getting closer to getting him home!
He was still getting breathing treatments, but they had been increasing the time between nebs over the past couple of days. On Monday, they were every 2 hours; Tuesday they were every 3 hours; now they are every 4 hours.
Thursday, December 2nd
The doctor stopped on Thursday afternoon and gave James the all clear to go home. It was a long 7 days and we were all pretty wiped. I am thankful to finally have my family back home again. Please say a prayer or two for James that he can stay healthy.
