First Trip to the ER

Last week, Griffin had himself a little cold and congestion, nothing concerning as we've been through several bouts of colds. By Friday, it had moved down into his chest and he started to have a cough. Still, nothing too concerning. By Saturday, though, his breathing became very wheezy and by nighttime, he was breathing awful fast. So Sunday morning I put a call in to our after hours Dr. and based on the symptoms, she told me to seek emergency medical treatment.

We waited until noon for the Pediatric Urgent Care to open, just assuming they would say the cold and/or virus just needs to run its' course. Wrong.

They immediately became alarmed at the rate at which he was breathing and showed me how is stomach was retracting to try to get air that his lungs were not. They did a breathing treatment and deep nasal aspirations. Griffin was better and they were very thorough and asked to monitor him for about 45 more minutes. I'm telling you, it was ROUGH being in an 8x8 room, nothing to do, having a sick, mobile baby and ending up being at the urgent care about 3 hours.....Griffin did AMAZING!

The doctors weren't satisfied with his breathing after the first treatment and monitoring, so we went for a second. It went MUCH better for Griff. By that time, Daddy came up and Griffin was much more comfortable with both of us and doing the nebulizer machine. But again, after about 45 minutes, his passages would not stay open.

They evaluated and told us that we should head to Children's Medical to have him further evaluated there. We weren't panicked, kind of relieved that they didn't just release us, rather look further into this.

We get there, do a 3rd treatment and a DEEP, deep suckage and he really did seem better. However, we both had our reservations that it would last. The dr. felt okay about sending us home. But with nothing. So what if his erratic breathing were to happen again? Well, it did. His stomach started retracting around 3:00 that morning, so Ryan stayed home with Ava and Griffin and I headed back up to Children's. This time, I was not going to leave empty handed.

They did a test for RSV, which came back negative. We had previously gotten the chest xray which didn't indicate any problems in the lungs. My poor little guy just couldn't breath. So they ended up giving him a steroid and another breathing treatment. Sent me home with the nebulizer and rx for continuing the steroid.

We saw his pediatrician on Monday and she agreed that we should have had the at-home breathing treatments in the first place.

So here we are, on the road to recovery. Griffin is getting better, his breathing still leaves a lot to be desired, but it's not so rapid and fierce...just more goopy than anything.

It was all so scary and I'm so thankful that my baby boy is getting better!