My sweet Ben.
And he has been such a trooper. I'm so, so proud of how he has behaved through it all.
On Wednesday his nose started dripping. Thursday morning he got progressively worse. By 3:30 p.m. on Thursday he was clutching me and crying "mommy, mommy" and refusing to lie down or let go of me. I decided it was time to call the doctor. I was blessed to be able to get a 4:20 p.m. appointment. We rushed over there (I live close). The doctor took one look at him - in the hallway and heard his wheezing - and this was the result along with a steroid. The doctor said it was a "close call" and later told me that she was very worried about him. And to think that I wasn't even sure he was sick when I took him in. He just had a runny nose and was acting strange. The reality was that he couldn't breathe.
What caused it? We don't know. Either allergies or a virus.
Tonight we get to move to every six hours. Same for tomorrow and tomorrow night. I will call Monday to get new directions.
I'm so thankful that
1. I had the van that day.
2. I decided to act on intuition and not just symptoms.
3. The doctor was able to see me right away.
4. I took him to the doctor!
God is so good.
Here are the facts so that you will know what I did not: if your child starts breathing excessively fast - look at his tummy to determine this as it will be pumping in and out at an amazing rate of speed - and/or if your child starts to repeatedly grunt in a kind of "uh-uh" manner. It might be time to see the doctor or head to the emergency room.
2 comments:
Big B has viral induced asthma. She was diagnosed at 9 months. She gets a cold and gets asthma. Sometimes the asthma starts before the cold. Once the asthma starts activity can also bring on an attack until we get it back under control. One clue for me is a wheezy cough at night seems to start first. We just got an inhaler with a spacer which is much less time consuming than the nebulizer. Scary stuff. Praise God you were able to see the doctor so quickly.
Michelle, I’m so sorry. Thank you for sharing about sweet Big B. Does your doctor think that she will grow out of this or will she have to go through this all her life? Does this happen every time she gets a cold?
About Ben - I still feel rather bewildered. I feel like I wasn't given enough information to know what I'm dealing with or if I should expect it to happen the next time he gets a cold. Actually, he has had these symptoms before so I do expect it to happen again. I’m really very glad that I now own the nebulizer and know what I am dealing with. I had no idea of its seriousness. I just wish I had a non-expiring prescription of the medicine.
Today is Ben’s first day off the nebulizer.
Mark told me you were asking about his medications. I'm not sure what they gave him at the doctor's office - the doctor said that she gave him an old ER cocktail but I didn’t ask what was in it. Watching it work was like watching a miracle in progress. He went from visibly sick to healthy looking in the span of about 30 minutes. It was amazing. He had two treatments while he was there. The doctor also gave him his first dose of Prednisolone (a corticosteroid). I was instructed to continue giving him this at home and to use Xopenex in the nebulizer. I assume that is what he was given at the doctor’s office but I’m not sure. The medicine tubes looked the same. Anyway, the doctor told me the next day when we went back to see her that she fully expected me to have to take him to the ER that night. Needless to say, she was very surprised and happy to see him bounding into her office. And he was bounding. He appeared perfectly well. Mark’s mother who was staying with us at the time couldn’t believe that there was anything wrong with him. I kept him home from church on Sunday due to the frequency of his treatments and because he was still coughing. I didn’t want to pass his sickness on to any of the other sweet children in his room or wear him out. Plus after being up every four hours for the last few nights he was pretty tired. He took a wonderful nap on Sunday so I was glad I kept him home. Sunday guilt though is a crazy thing.
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