feeling puney again

ugh...not how i wanted to start a morning.  graham woke up and felt pretty warm.  took his temperature and it was a nice 103.  dosed him up with tylenol and let him kind of chill out for a little bit.  when i went to check him in 30 minutes or so, the poor kid, i could feel heat radiating off of his body.  i knew something wasn't right.  i took his temperature again and it was still 102.  yup, made the executive decision to take the dude to patient first.

5 minutes until we were at patient first i had flashbacks to when he was 7 months old and headed to the doctors.  yup, i turn into the parking lot and graham starts coughing...but not a normal cough.  ugh...with the third of three coughs comes the vomit.  commence mommy freakout mode!  i speed through the parking lot and get to patient first.  luckily i had some towels in the trunk and i was able to get most of him clean.  shorts were toast though, so i had to call grady and have him come bring me some, since of course that was the one thing i didn't have in the diaper bag.  

i could tell that graham was definitely not himself when he fell asleep on me in the waiting room after we had been checked in.  he barely even woke up when they were taking his temperature and weight.  it wasn't until we got to the exam room that he kind of woke up and was somewhat himself.  

as we waited for the doctor, we were able to distract him a bit with a movie on daddy's phone.  

definitely not the news we wanted to hear from the doctor though.  

STREP!

oh no!!!  this is graham's first case of strep, and if he's anything like his mom...it won't be his last.  for his sake, i hope it's his last.  or at the very list, one of a handful of times he gets strep.  

well...looks like someone will be staying home from school tomorrow!

feeling puney

oh no...this little guy is not feeling well!

woke up with a fever, so i guess we'll be staying home from school today.

and i had to document this picture as it's the FIRST time he has ever fallen asleep on the couch!

that's was the tell tale sign that he really wasn't himself.

feel better soon dude...we're headed to NC soon!

update

so i decided to stay home today since the dude hadn't been fever free for 24 hours.  he woke up not having a fever, but still coughing and wheezing.  i called the doctors office and got an 845 appointment.  score!  got to the office and got brought back.  no big surprise, he sounded junky and was wheezing.  we gave the dude another neb treatment to see if that would do anything.  15 mins later, better, but still not great.  

apparently the doctor thinks graham might have had a touch of pneumonia, but there's no way of really telling unless they did a chest xray (yeah, didn't want to have to do  that today!).  so our diagnosis...nothing really...but we're starting an oral steroid once a day on top of the albuterol and pulmacort to see if we can stomp out whatever this thing is!!  i think the doctors and nurses were all relieved to hear we had made an appointment for the pulmonologist on wednesday.  i think they're just as anxious as us to see what they say! 

fever and chills

so it's been a LONG weekend with a sick kiddo.  not so much the throw up sick, which poor andrea is dealing with, but fever, chills and cough sick!  started on saturday, we skyped andrea, tim, olivia and mason to wish olivia a happy birthday.  graham was in his chair eating his dinner, as was mason who was quarantined from olivia.  we lost our connection and then i made a comment on how pitiful mason looked.  not more than 15 minutes later graham was still in his chair but not eating anything?!

i had made him pasta, and we all know how he LOVES pasta, and nope.....didn't touch ANY of it!  very strange.  i also had heated up a spinach nugget which he loves and nope....didn't touch it either.  hmmmm, something's up.  i just felt like something was wrong and grady tried calming me down.  then he made the comment "uh, his his leg twitching?"  yup, sure was.  me "uh, are both his arms shaking?!"  yup, sure were!  took a closer look and he was shivering all over.  :(  i took him upstairs to change his diaper and get him into some pj's and took his temperature.  101.2!  YIKES!  how did that happen?!  

side note, he's in a fleece foot sleeper, and still shivering.  so i wrap him in a blanket.  still shivering.  wrap him in another blanket.  still shivering!!  wrap him in a THIRD blanket.  better, but still shivering a little.  since he had fallen asleep and was in his crib, i figured i would let him be for 15 minutes or so to see what would happen.  i walk back into his room after 10, because i couldn't wait, and he was shivering again!!  so i picked him up and put him on me, which i think my body heat coupled with his blankets worked wonders.  but...

...since the dude had never had chills before i got a little nervous.  called the on-call line and they said because of his weight we could give him children's motrin and to give that to him for the next does to see if that works better than the infant stuff i had given him before.  i decided i was going to let the dude sleep with me that night since i wanted to keep a close eye on him.  so around 1030 pm for his next dose i took his temp since he felt warm.  103.2!!  OMG!!!  took the blanket off him, turned our ceiling fan on a little higher and gave him the motrin.  30 minutes later he was better.  not great, but at a low grade fever at least.

he tossed and turned throughout the night and at 6 he was up for the morning.  since i hadn't gotten any sleep, and grady had slept in the other room, i asked him to take care of graham so i could try to get a couple hours of sleep.  throughout the day the dude was still running a low grade fever and then before his motrin dosage it would spike up.  no chills today, but i was still nervous that even with the motrin, his fever wasn't going away.

paranoid me, called the on-call again.  same nurse, so she knew i was a little concerned.  i knew she didn't want to have us go to the hospital, so she asked if i thought he would be okay overnight with the motrin, albuterol and pulmacort treatments we had been giving him.  i was pretty sure he would be, i think i just needed reassurance.  so she said, keep doing what we're doing, maybe give him a warm bath, and call the doctors office in the morning for an appointment.

hopefully we'll get some sleep tonight!

we'll update everyone tomorrow!!

wheezie update

the steroid shot seems to have done the trick!  the dude woke up this morning sounding much better.  not 100%, but definitely better.  what would a holiday be without a sick child right!!  :)

oh...and we'll be making an appointment soon for the dude to see a pediatric pulmonologist.  i'll keep everyone updated on that as well.

wheezie

over the weekend the dude started getting a little snarfely.  we didn't think too much of it though since there were no yellow snots, fever, etc.  looked like a regular little cold.  not much the doctor could really do.  all we could do was continue the pulmacort treatments every morning and night like we've been doing for months.  and to try and prevent a trip to the doctors office we started giving him albuterol three times a day as well.

unfortunately, when i picked the dude up from school today, he didn't sound any better and that's after two days or so of being on pulmacort and albuterol.  mwrrrrrr!!  : (  i don't like to mess around with his breathing, so i called the doctor to see if they wanted us to come in to get him checked out.  YUP!  7pm here we come!

we walk back to our room and even the nurse was like...hmmm, he doesn't sound good.  never like hearing that!  i knew it was kind of bad though.  like the nurse said, you could hear him wheezing from across the room.  doctor fernandez walks in (who has seen graham a couple times before).....'mr. graham!!!  i don't like the sounds of this!!!'

we know the drill though....listen to his chest, give him a neb treatment, then doc comes back and listens again.  i had a bad feeling we were going to see the ER at inova that night.  graham proceeds to scream the entire neb treatment (which is totally unlike him), the doctor comes back and listens to him and still isn't completely happy with how he sounds.  

we had three options:

1 - start oral steroids in addition to pulmacort and albuterol

2 - get a steroid shot and see if that kicks in quickly

3 - go to the ER

it was kind of a no brainer for us.  #2!!  the dude didn't like it, but we knew it would probably be our best option seeing as we didn't feel like being admitted to the hospital!  so we'll see how it goes!  cross your fingers!

guess what?!!!

we're breaking out of this joint!

 

 okay, well we're not really breaking out, we're getting discharged!!!  woo hoo!! almost a full 24 hours at the hospital, but not quite!

diagnosis:

bronchiolitis (again!) and the start of ear infections in both ears!!

treatment:

albuterol every three hours until our follow-up with the peds office on monday

pulmacort (inhaled steriod) twice a day

oral steroid twice a day until sunday

antibiotics once a day for 9 more days

OMG!  sounds like we're going to have our hands full this weekend with treatments!  looks like not a lot of sleep for us either....again!  but hey, as long as it gets the dude feeling and breathing better i'll do it!!

future:

sounds like we'll be using the pulmacort twice a day for awhile now as a preventative measure.  we also need to try and figure out what is causing these episodes, which leads me to the fact that we will most likely be seeing a pulmonologist once the dude gets better to discuss prevention, treatments, etc. 

pediatrics wing

welcome to our room!   

i'm thankful that i don't have any updates from last night after being brought up to our very spacious room in the pediatrics wing (i'm standing in the corner where the full size pull out couch is that i 'slept' on).  the dude's oxygen absorption levels stayed at 90% or above all night, which meant he didn't need oxygen at all overnight.  woo hoo!!

he got one neb treatment right after he fell asleep (which was at 12:30am!!!), and then another one around 4:30am.  he slept through both, but was awake around 7 and was nothing but his normal cheery self!  

since he had the monitor taped to his toe measuring his oxygen levels, we couldn't do much exploring when he woke up.  he didn't seem to mind watching cartoons and having breakfast in bed though!

from what i understand, we'll continue with the neb treatments until the doctor comes to see us.  hopefully we'll be able to go home today!!!

wednesday adventures

we started off in the right direction.  it had been a long night of neb treatments every three hours, but grady and i took turns and it seemed to pay off.  the dude was sounding better, not 100%, but better than the day before.  we went in for our check-up and dr. rodriguez agreed he sounded better, but had a long way to go before he was completely better.  like 4 weeks or so to go!!!  oi vey!  

she liked that he was sounding better and told us we could continue the pulmacort and oral steroids, but to try and give the albuterol every 4-6 hours now instead of every 3. 

morning and afternoon passes.  still had to give neb treatments every 3 hours as the dude would start to sound worse at the 3 hour mark.  then finally, at 6pm, only 2 hours after his last treatment, he was sounding worse again and i could see a little retraction again.  not good!  so i call the doctor and ask if i could bring him in for them to check him out, just to make sure he's okay.

we head to the doctor, dr. fernandez looks and listens to him and says the dreaded words "you need to head to the ER!!!!"  mwrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!  they give the dude another neb treatment to hold him over until we get to the ER, then we get in the car and head over.

by 7 we're back in the pediatrics triage room and the doctor was super nice.  she agreed with everything our doctors had told us to do previously with medications and treatments, and was glad i thought to bring him back in to be checked.  they gave him another type of neb treatment (not albuterol, but can't remember the name of the medicine) and it REALLY helped clear him up.  the doctor wanted me to feed him and try to get him to fall asleep though so she could observe him a little more.

apparently, when little dudes (and dudettes) fall asleep the oxygen absorption level can sometimes drop.  and that's exactly what graham's did.  :(  it dropped pretty low, to like 86, and the doctor started him on oxygen right away.  i wasn't quite sure what to think because the dude was fast asleep and he looked normal.  i guess thoughts of 'how long has this been going on' were running through my head and i started to feel a little guilty.  oxygen definitely helped bring the absorption levels up, but unfortunately that meant we were going to have to be admitted to the hospital for overnight observation!

the dude has definitely been a trooper through everything so far.  couldn't have asked for a better boy!

this is the dude sleeping with just oxygen coming through his cool dragon mask!

sent home

so today was not a good day.  i had to drive to richmond to drop a proposal off, and halfway down school calls saying graham is crankier than usual.  doesn't have a fever, but doesn't want to eat, sleep, and is breathing a little hard.  we decide we'll see if tylenol might help the dude sleep whatever was bothering him off and school would call if he didn't get better.  

well, an hour later i get another call.  we need to pick graham up.  he's not better and it seems like he's having a harder time breathing now.  ugh, i had JUST gotten to richmond and wouldn't be back in town for another two hours.  luckily grady's boss understood the situation and let him go get the dude.

grady gets him home and gives him a nebulizer treatment.  on my way home i schedule a doctors appointment for later in the evening (LOVE that our dr's office is open until 8!).  i finally get back home and grady is holding him when i walk in the door.  i can hear him right away and can tell from looking at him that he's not feeling well.

i go upstairs to change his diaper and look at his chest.  to my dismay i notice his breathing is retracted.  not good!  it had only been an hour or so since his treatment and i knew right away that the dude couldn't wait for his appointment to see the doctor.  i call the office and they agree.  bring him in and we'll take a look at him.

we get to the office and they were glad we had given him a neb already.  they give him another one to see if it helps even more.  it does a little, but dr. bill thought he might need a little more umph to kick this one out.  so the dude got a shot of steroids and then our directions were to give the dude albuterol treatments every three hours (even through the night), pulmacort (inhaled steroid) twice a day and finally an oral steroid twice a day for 5 days.  we also made a follow-up appointment for wednesday morning so the dr's could check him out.

it's going to be a long night!!!

ps....HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY to mr. mason man!!!

urgent care

so i guess it's lucky we have today off.  looks like the dude has a small case of pink eye!  no fun!  hmmmm, and putting the ointment in his eye is MUCH harder now that he knows how to move his head and arms!  

looks like i'll be staying home from work tomorrow since the dude isn't allowed at school for 24 hours.  we don't want to give this to anyone else!  

hopefully this will go away soon!!

little dragon

ever since the dude had to have his first neb treatment (which seems like eons ago, but was probably only 3 months ago or so), i've told him he's about to become a dragon. i don't think he has any idea what a dragon is,but i think it's pretty cute. he's never been scared by the nebulizer, and for the first time wore the little mask!! we used to have to hold the mouth piece near his nose and have him breath it in that way.

this afternoon he was even wearing the mask and playing with his toys. such a trooper!

ps...we also found out this morning that the dude likes yo gaba gaba....that's what he's looking at in the pictures!

crazy panic mom mode

today was the first time i entered the 'crazy panicked mom' mode! here's how the day went.

6am - graham wakes up and is a little congested, but other than that...normal.

7am - get the dude changed for school. noticed he's got some good 'candles' going, so i suction out his nose.

8am - drop off at school and he's as happy as can be playing in the padded ring thing they have in his room.

12:50pm - i get a call from one of the teachers at school: "we wanted to call to see if you were aware of graham's congestion." me: "yes. he was somewhat stuffed up this morning, why?" school: "well it's gotten pretty bad, to the point where he can't fall asleep. and then when he does fall asleep he seems to be having a hard time breathing. we think you might want to come pick him up and take him to the emergency room."

FREAK OUT in 5.....4.....3....2.....

i try to remain as calm as possible and tell them we didn't see that at all last night or this morning and that i would get there as soon as possible.

12:55pm - call dr's and get an appointment ASAP.

1:25pm - i get to school and he indeed is breathing REALLY fast and hard. all the teachers were worried. never a good sign!

1:35pm - worst car ride yet with the dude. he was crying the whole way there, but i think that was the only way he was able to breath. he would start coughing and i think it hurt him, so he would cry more and the cycle continued.

1:40pm - probably about 5 seconds away from parking in the drs office parking lot is when the real crazy panicked mom came out! i had been watching the dude in the backseat mirror the entire way to the doctors, thinking he may be getting worse. then at 1:40, with the drs office building in sight, he all of a sudden turns beet red and stops breathing!! FREAK OUT! then, not 2 seconds later (not to be graphic, but...) he projectile vomits what looks to be everything in his little tummy. and this doesn't happen once, but twice! FREAK OUT! finally, what seemed to be 100 miles away (but was only about 200 feet) i get to a parking spot. i honestly don't know how i didn't hit someone over those 200 feet. i was freaking out so bad i was probably going 20 miles an hour through the parking lot. oops, but can you blame me?! i was crazy panicked mom! i JUMP out of the car and sprint to the other side. i completely ignore all the vomit that is all over the poor dude and grab him out of his car seat. amazingly i remembered to grab my purse and i ran into the front door.

"hi, i have an appointment at 1:50, but someone needs to help me now!"

1:41pm - the nurse takes me back to a room and they immediately start asking me all sorts of questions. i knew something was wrong with the dude since he was, what i call, a limp noodle. he was just laying there in my arms and there was nothing i could do for him. we undress him, since he's disgustingly covered in his own vomit and the nurses notice that his breathing is retracted. another FREAK OUT!

1:50pm - the nurse walks over to the room across the hall: "excuse me dr. bill. i hate to interrupt, but you really need to come check this little guy out." FREAK OUT!

1:55pm - dr. bill: "oh my goodness graham. what are you doing to your poor mom?!" he takes a quick look and immediately has the nurses get a neb treatment set up for him. he'll be back in 10mins.

2:20pm - neb treatment is done, dr bill takes another look at him and the dude is back to normal!!!

2:35pm - walk out of the with a diaper clad baby (since i was not putting those clothes back on him) and drive home.

O-M-G!!!!

i was so glad to be home and able to just cuddle with the little dude. he snoozed on me for a good hour and a half and then we ventured out to get his medicine.

he's on albuterol neb treatments every 4-6 hours, steriod neb treatments twice a day (we can mix it with the albuterol thankfully!) and prednisone orally twice a day. we did our first combined treatment at 630 and it really seemed to help. thankfully the little guy ate his dinner with no problem, took his bottle at the regular time and has been snoozing in his crib since about 745 or so. we're not sure if we're going to scoop him up and let him sleep with us so we can hear him better, or if we'll just turn the monitor on REALLY loud, so we can hear everything.

i think he's on the mend and hopefully we'll get a cleaner bill of health when we go for our follow-up visit on saturday morning. i'll keep everyone posted!

on the mend

yesterday was spent eating, sleeping and taking medicine for the dude. he was running a low grade fever pretty much all day, but honestly stayed in good spirits the whole day. not too much crankiness. just a WHOLE LOT of snuggling. we stayed on top of things with tylenol and his antibiotic and today i think it's safe to say we're on the mend!

he's not completely the 'little dude' again, but he was able to muster up some energy to bounce and flash a couple duck smiles (that's what i'm calling them these days)! we're so happy he's feeling a little more like himself. hopefully tomorrow will be even better.

feeling puney

so my hope of the dude sleeping off whatever sickness he had, or that it was just teething, was unsuccessful. poor dude woke up with a 102.2 fever, so i knew something wasn't right. i had to wait until 8 to call the doctors office to get an appointment. luckily though they got me in right at 840.

dr. bill took a look at him and after checking his left ear, thinks he found the culprit. little dude's first ear infection!! poor guy had to go through the nose swab of a flu test after getting gunk dug out of his ear, so needless to say, he was all snuggled up on my shoulder until we left the office.

the flu test came back negative (thank goodness), so we walked out with our antibiotic prescription and well wishes that he'll be much better for his 6 month appointment in a couple weeks. (oh my goodness...how did it get to be almost 6 months already!!!) mommy has the best medicine though. cuddles and kisses! here's hoping the little dude feels better soon!

on a side note, the dude weighed in at a whopping 16.7 pounds!!! over double his birth weight!!

feverish friday

2:21pm

call from school that graham has a fever of 101.2!

2:25pm

walk over to my bosses office and tell him about graham and i get "oh no! get out of here!" gotta love having a boss who has three kids of his own and understands the urgency of the situation.

2:40pm

i get to school and kadisa is holding graham and he's all red in the face and hot. poor dude!!!

2:55pm

we get home and give the dude his first dose of tylenol. something is definitely not right seeing as he's been sleeping in two hour stretches all day and normally he only sleeps an hour at a time and only about two naps a day. we were going on the 3rd nap after i gave him the tylenol and he had already taken two naps at school for two hours each!! maybe he'll just sleep it out?!

6:02pm

we've been cuddling all afternoon and sleeping. fever has seemed to go down. we're definitely at a better, more normal temperature now.

8:00pm

nursed one last time and then put the dude to bed for the night. OUT for the count!

ei yiyi!! the little dude gave me my first dose of a 'sick' baby today. i guess i should count my blessings we made it this far though. 5 1/2 months old without having a fever, and 1 1/2 of those months he's been back at school and hadn't caught anything. hopefully this means the dude has an immune system like his dad. grady rarely gets sick!

sick day

nope, not for me this time....for the little dude!

for awhile now graham has had a cough. we first thought it was acid reflux, but then started to realize that might not be what it was. the cough got a little worse and then we heard a rattle in his chest. took him to the doctor and they told us nothing was wrong, that it was just course breathing. treatment was just to keep an eye on him. the coughing got better, but a couple weeks ago it started back up again. since i had been sick 3 weeks ago i was worried that i had given the dude what i had. scared that it might really take a toll on him, grady took him to the doctor today.

we saw a different doctor and instead of him focusing on the cough that we brought him in for, he focused more on graham's breathing. it worried him a bit, so he tried a nebulizer treatment. it loosened up a little mucus in his chest, but the doctor was still a little concerned. so he told grady to take the dude to the ER for xrays and another neb treatment. mwrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

grady was a trooper and was at the doctors from about 945am-1145am...then sat at the hospital from about 1pm-4pm!!! but from what grady said, graham was haming it up and having a good ol time. cooing, laughing, sleeping, flirting with the ladies!!

so while all this is going on, i'm at work worrying what could be wrong with my little dude. turns out he has bronchiolitis. that explains why he's had a cough for so long. looks like it could last anywhere from 2-4 weeks. so hopefully the worst part of this is over and he'll start getting better soon. they did test him for RSV and that came back negative. so i guess that's a positive thing from this whole thing. well that and the fact that the little dude is growing!!! 13 pounds!!!

for now, the hospital sent us home with a little inhaler that we use every 4 hours for the first 24 hours, and then we can give it to him when needed after the 24 hours. it won't cure the bronchiolitis, but it will at least help open up his lungs.

so think positive thoughts for the little dude that he gets over this soon! we're ready for the days when we don't hear him cough!