I mentioned in the 8/5 post that James was having some digestion issues again, just like he had when he was in the hospital recovering from his spinal fusion surgery. During that hospital stay, they stopped giving him formula for awhile and switched to Pedialyte instead to keep him hydrated. Stacy tried that approach when he started having similar digestion issues a few weeks ago, gave him straight Pedialyte for a couple of days and slowly added formula back in. Just when we thought he was back to ‘normal’, he threw something else our way.
Last Thursday James woke up with a high heart rate and low sats. We made the decision to keep him home from school, so just four days into the school year he had already nixed his chance of getting perfect attendance this year. That was a bit of a joke that Stacy and I had. If you’ve followed James for any length of time you know that James is sick often and sometimes spends more time out of school than he does in it.
His one-on-one school nurse stopped by to take a listen and said that his lungs sounded clear, so we weren’t really sure what was going on with him. He did have a fever of 100.4 so there was definitely something going on. Stacy placed a call to the pulmonologist to ask for his opinion. He sent over a prescription for an antibiotic just in case there was something brewing.
The next day (Friday) was pretty much a repeat. He was struggling with his numbers, and his lungs still sounded clear. Got his second dose of the antibiotic.
Saturday morning his pulse ox alarm started going off at around 3:30 am…low sats and high heart rate. Called the pediatrician to get his thoughts, and he recommended we go to the ER to get a chest x-ray. Guess what? Pneumonia on the whole right side, which we thought was weird because even the ER doc said that both lungs sounded clear. Usually when someone has pneumonia there is a crackling sound in the lungs. Someone had once told us that it sounds like crumpling up a piece of paper. The fact that James’ lungs sounded clear, but the x-ray showed that there was pneumonia covering the entire right lung was very strange. They sent him up to the PICU.
After we got him settled in his room, I had to run home to meet the baker who was dropping off the birthday cake that she made for his party on Sunday. Unfortunately, we had to cancel his party because he was in the hospital, but the cake looked awesome.
Sunday morning it got a little bit interesting. None of the nurses or doctors on the floor could hear any kind of rattling, crackling, or wetness in his lungs. They all said that it sounds like he has good airflow. The doctor took a look at the x-ray, and she doesn’t think he had pneumonia. Two questions immediately popped into my head:
- If the ER misdiagnosed him with pneumonia, and sent him up to the PICU (which is more expensive than the regular pediatric section), are we—or our insurance—still paying the “PICU fee”?
- If it’s not pneumonia, then why are his numbers off and why does he need oxygen to keep his sats up?
They wanted to keep him through Sunday for observation and see if they could get him off oxygen before sending him home.
James must have understood what the doctor said because by Sunday evening his heartrate was back down to normal and his sats were in the high 90s without oxygen:
Monday, he did need a little bit of oxygen to keep his sats up, but they didn’t feel a need to keep him in the hospital. We just had to wait for the discharge paperwork, then we were free to go.
Home sweet home.
