Friday - We're out of here (again)

They finally let us go home on Friday at 2pm. Here is S feeling much better
celebrating the fact that we will be going home soon.

Thursday - the view from here

So not much happened on Thursday. We slept most of the day. S got IV steroids to help with the inflamation, which we learned from the previous night's x-ray that her airway below her vocal chords was narrowed significantly. Here is a picture of what I saw all day from the couch as S slept. (Those things hanging from the ceiling over the nurse's station are beautiful butterflies made by patients!)

Wednesday - A worried doctor

I don't see our pediatrician get upset very often, but I did on this day. I called our ENT to discuss the breathing problem and got told to call her pediatrician instead. (Our pediatrician was mad that our ENT wouldn't help us!)

We were able to get S in to see her pediatrician around 2pm. She was diagnosed with a stridor and prescribed steroids. Her doctor also sent us over for a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. No pneumonia thankfully. We went home and settled in for the night.

9:30pm my phone rang. It was our pediatrician who was concerned about S and wanted to hear her breathe. I took the phone into S's room and she woke up and hung up on the doctor! :) Too funny. The doc wasn't comfortable with S being home for the night so we packed up and went to the ER.

Our doc called ahead and warned them we were coming. It was an amazing trip and was so nice to be back in OUR hospital. From the time I arrived in the hospital to when we saw the doctor was only 9 minutes. The attending doc was really worried about S, and prescribed breathing treatments and admitted us. We had the BEST nurse ever named John. S loved him. He was so caring and played with S. He actually got her to drink!!

Poor M stayed with us until about 2am when he left us and went to his office (across the street from the hospital).

Poor girl was in so much pain and it took a lot (LOT) of morphine to settle her down. I did NOT take a video of her really drugged. And if I did, I certainly would NOT have posted it on our blog! :)

We didn't get moved into our room on the 6th floor (where were were last month) until 5:45 am. It was a long, long day!

Tuesday Night - Trouble begins

Looking back, I knew it was a problem. S woke up breathing noisily and seemed to be gasping for breath. I took it as a normal S thing, added to surgery recovery. I held her for a few hours on the couch, woke M up to get his take on her breathing. We decided not to call 911 as she seemed better. If I knew what I know now, I would have called in a heartbeat. Had something really happened, I would have never forgiven myself. Even now, I feel so guilty - but I didn't know.

Tuesday - We're out of here!

So Tuesday morning, they tried to discharge us from the hospital, but I refused. S wasn't drinking yet and I didn't want to have to come back to the hospital to rehydrate her. So we stayed until about 2:30. My mom came to pick us up since M was working and stuck in a meeting. We went home, S played for a while and then we both had the chance to take a nap. Here are some pictures from Tuesday. She was laughing quite a bit but that might have been all the drugs.

Monday - Post Surgery

So seeing your baby in pain is hard, hard, hard! She was fine apparently until she saw us in the hallway as they were moving her upstairs to her room. She freaked out so much that I had to jump on her gurney and hold her to calm her down. She was in pain and needed a dose of morphine to settle down. By the end of the day, she was in a good mood and loved to hide in the cabinet and managed to eat some jello as long as it was spoon fed by Daddy. The night was rough though and she needed quite a bit of pain medicine and slept in the bed with me which was quite an adventure. I never knew how much she moved at night, whew! I slept about an hour that night. What a trooper!

Monday - Surgery

So, we met with an ENT doctor last week to discuss what to do about S's recurring ear infections and to our dismay, the ENT recommended that we remove both her tonsils and adenoids and add tubes to drain the fluid from her ears. S also failed her hearing test, which helps to explain why her speech is delayed. Our pediatrician asked us to PLEASE get a second opinion, so we did and he concurred with the first ENT. So Monday morning, bright and early, we arrived at the hospital. This was NOT our usual hospital and did we ever feel the difference. Here are some pictures from before surgery! The top one is after the Versed kicked in. I got a glimpse of S as a drunk college student. Very funny and sad at the same etime.