No Rest for the Weary

Evie is in the hospital. It's still so surreal for me that my normally happy and healthy baby is sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, but it's true. For the past 3 weeks in a row, she's gotten sick and then shaken it off just in time to pick up something new. Two weeks ago, she got a cold and gave it to everyone else. Last Sunday, she got a mild form of the tummy flu, and we all spent the rest of the week passing around the more severe version. This past Sunday, while sitting in Relief Society, she kept coughing and was breathing very quickly and shallowly even when she fell asleep. Thinking it was just a cold, we tried all of our usual tricks to help make her comfortable. I didn't work on Monday, so I spent all day with Evie: I sucked out her nose, gave her infant Tylenol when her coughing hurt her throat, tried saline nasal drops, turned on the humidifier at night, took her into the steamy bathroom to try and clear out her lungs, let her take lots of naps so her body could put all of its energy into healing, held her and rocked her for hours at a time when she was especially miserable and just wanted her Mommy, and even tried using some essential oils that our home teacher brought for her that had helped when his kids had croup. Nothing worked.

Tuesday morning, February 7th, I was getting myself ready for work and getting Evie ready to spend the day with my in-laws. I got a call from my boss, asking if I'd gotten her previous message. I hadn't, and she told me that she'd originally called to tell me I didn't need to come into work that day, but that a coworker wasn't feeling well and they needed me to come in after all. Since I was already in my work clothes, I said that was fine, and we hung up. While getting Evie ready, however, I noticed that she was very clingy and miserable. Nothing I had tried to make her comfortable had worked, and she just wanted me to hold her while she clung to me and cried. Finally, after praying and deliberating, I called my boss back to see if there was any chance that someone else could cover my coworker since my baby was so uncomfortable that I didn't think it was a good idea to take her over to my in-laws. She understood my situation, and told me that they'd somehow manage if I couldn't come in, even though they'd be a couple of people short and our regional managers were coming in to inspect the store. I thanked her, apologized, and hung up again. I left a message with my father-in-law, telling him that he didn't need to babysit after all, and called Todd to tell him that he wouldn't need to pick up Evie from his parents' like we'd originally planned. That evening, when Todd got home, he heard Evie breathing and decided that he wanted to take her to Urgent Care because she wasn't getting any better after 3 days of being sick. It was the night of the Republican Party Caucus, so we took our registration forms with us just in case we were able to make it after seeing the doctor, but we weren't too optimistic.

When we got to Urgent Care, the nurse took us to the back and started checking out Evie. She weighed Evie, listened to her lungs, and asked us all the normal questions (how long had Evie been acting like this, were her immunizations up-to-date, was she sleeping/eating normally, etc.). Then she told the doctor what she'd found out, and he sent us immediately to the Emergency Room without charging us because he thought that Evie might need to be put on oxygen. We got to the Emergency Room around 7:00, and told the receptionist that Evie was having labored breathing. What immediately followed involved much panic on my part and what seemed like chaos on their part as they all rushed around hooking Evie up to tubes and machines and paging different doctors. With oxygen tubes up her nose, an oxygen saturation indicator attached to her toe, and sticky circles attached to her chest and belly to measure her heart rate, Evie was NOT a happy camper. She was confused and scared, and I couldn't blame her because I was too! 

The doctor told us that Evie had bronchiolitis and ordered a culture to see if it was caused by RSV or not based on the following symptoms: quick and labored breathing, wheezing in the lungs, ineffective coughing, decreased appetite, fever, rapid heart rate, inadequate oxygen saturation of the blood, and retractions under the ribs where Evie was working too hard to draw in a breath. After sending the culture to the lab, the respiratory doctor tried two nebulizer treatments to see if they would improve Evie's condition. The first was albuterol followed about fifteen minutes later by racemic epinephrine. Evie hated those treatments, and screamed the entire time! When neither of them had much effect, we were told that she would probably have to be admitted to the hospital. It was just a matter of whether the upstairs pediatrician and staff felt comfortable handling Evie's condition (if not, they would send us to another hospital) and if there would be an available room for her. Finally, we got word back that yes, we could stay at Sky Ridge, and yes, they had just opened up a room for her. While we waited for her room to be cleaned, Todd, his dad, and our brother-in-law John gave her a priesthood blessing. She was told that her parents love her, everyone else in the family loves her, and her Heavenly Father loves her and wants her to be able to play with her Mommy and Daddy. She was promised a quick recovery, healthy body, and cheerful spirit. I have to admit, that blessing helped calm me down quite a lot; I knew that she was going to be okay, even if it didn't happen immediately.

Since Todd's job is full-time and pays lots more than mine does, we agreed that I would stay in the hospital with Evie overnight while he went home and got enough sleep to go to work the next morning. Since the hospital is only about ten minutes away from his office, I gave him a short list of things to bring me on the way to work--clothes for both me and Evie, extra diapers, some body wash so I could take a shower, some food for me so I wouldn't have to order room service, etc.--and sent him home with a kiss. Then Evie and I spent a miserable night together. There really was no rest for the weary. We were both exhausted, but every time we started dozing, someone else would come in to check on her breathing, or give her another nebulizer treatment, or reattach her toe monitor, or suck out her nose. It was brutal, but we somehow managed to scrape together a couple of hours of sleep and were ready to meet the doctor the next morning.

To Be Continued...