In & Out of the Hospital

Those of you following along on Facebook already know this, but we ended up taking another trip to the ER on Monday.

Jack’s wheezing had gotten progressively worse and my mom was concerned that it had turned into stridor. Long story short – Jack was diagnosed with bronchiolitis and RSV. His oxygen levels were low and dropping, so he was admitted into the hospital Monday night.

We were given a room with a crib that looked like a baby cage in it and a small couch which converted to a miniature bed. I spent the entire night fighting with Jack to keep the oxygen hoses up his nose.cage

It pretty much went like this:

Step 1: Hoses are inserted into nose. Jack cries so hard that his overtired body relaxes and he starts dozing off. He sleeps for 2 – 5 minutes.

Step 2: In his half-asleep state he swipes at his nose with his hand, ripping the oxygen tubes out. His oxygen levels lower, causing the machine alarms to go off. Jack wakes up fully and starts crying.

Step 3: I jump off the mini bed, lower the side of the baby cage which makes a huge squeak each time, wrestle Jack into submission to reinsert the hose. Soothe him back into a half-asleep state. Put up the crib railing {SQUEAK} and shove my arm through the rails so that I can continue patting him into sleepytime. Slowly walk away and get back into bed.

Step 4: Repeat

So that was life from about 9:00 pm – 2:00 am.

Then, it was time for another nebulizer treatment so I put Jack in my mommy ninja hold and kept him restrained while holding the dragon-shaped apparatus over his face for 10 – 15 minutes while he screamed.

At this point, I begged the nurse for something to knock him out so that he would just get OVER that hump of being half-asleep and finally get some actual sleep. I asked for anything – Tylenol, Benadryl, a tranquillizer dart to the neck…whatever! She came back a few minutes later with both Tylenol and Benadryl and we dosed him up and waited for it to kick in.

Finally, Jack fell asleep.

For about 20 minutes. Then, he went back to trying to scratch his nose and pulling out the oxygen hosing.  We tried the crib, we tried the mini bed with me, and we tried the crib again. I finally got him to sleep on top of me like a scarf around 3:00 am. Of course, that is when MY sickness started kicking in even more and the next few hours consisted us sleeping together, me slowly extracting myself from his hold, me vomiting in the bathroom, rinsing mouth/brushing teeth, return to bed and scooch myself back under him. Rinse and repeat. Oh wait, there was random kicking and punching from him too. I can’t forget about that because I’ll most likely find some odd bruises in a few days and wonder how in the heck I got them.

monkeyWe woke up around 7:00 and spent the day just hanging out around the hospital room. To get a good idea on how that went, try to imagine keeping an almost one year old confined to a small space for more than 20 minutes. Yeah, it went that well. Luckily, Jack went down for a nice, long nap around 10:00 and my mom arrived with some small toys for him to play with.

Even better, when the doctor stopped by to check him out she said that we were allowed to leave the hospital that day! It took a few more hours for us to get released, pack up all our crap, drive to pick up his new nebulizer prescription and get the little guy home. Pretty much the second we got in the door I stripped us of our germy clothes and gave him a nice, long bath. He then went down for a nap in his own (non-cage-like) crib and I took the world’s longest shower.

I’m back at work today and my husband is home with Jack. They have a pediatrician appointment scheduled for this afternoon, so hopefully she sees enough improvement that we can cut back on the nebulizer treatments (I had to give him one at 2:30 am, which made my morning alarm clock hurt a little more than usual).

Jack is doing so much better now though and I really appreciate all of the kindness from everyone on Facebook, Twitter, my email box and in real life. Except for those two people who “unliked” my Facebook page in the midst of my hospital updates. You guys suck.

Everyone else is fantastic though, so do me a little favor – wrap your arms around yourself and give yourself a big hug from me. Don’t do this in public though, that would be weird.

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7 thoughts on “In & Out of the Hospital”

      1. Yup, it says Mister Cool and I KNEW you would notice! =) As for the marshmallows, I’m almost eaten both the boxes my boss got me… but in my defense they are small and labeled as “a perfect amount for eating”…

  1. Crap! Too late, I was already hugging myself hard when my boss walked in on me. How do I explain that one????

    So glad Jack is feeling better and that you got sleep and a shower. Nice to be back at work, isn’t it? Hope the pediatrician appt. goes well!

    1. A few days ago I had my entire hand down the front of my shirt and was looking for a random tickling hair (that had fallen off my head, it didn’t grow there!) when one of my superiors walked by and looked in my office…

  2. I totally feel for you! I hope it’s OVER now! My son got a peanut stuck in his bronchial tube at 18 months and it was a horrible HORRIBLE 48 hours in the hospital, mainly because of the tubes and stupid crib! And it is literally as though they don’t understand that this is a tiny person who doesn’t WANT to be still and keep tubes in! glad he’s feeling better!

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