Crazy Weekend

For those of you who haven't heard--Tyson was hospitalized last weekend. Everything all started on Friday...

Friday morning he woke up with a barky cough, but I didn't think a whole lot of it. Our kids have had coughs like that before and been fine. Gradually throughout the day, he just kept getting worse and worse. He was coughing a lot more and his breathing started to get really raspy and he seemed like he was struggling to breathe. Around 3:00 I decided we should probably see if we could get him in to the doctor before the weekend. He had a 103.5 degree fever and his breathing was pretty bad.

We ended up having to take him in to Urgent Care (Tyson's doctor's office only had 1 doctor in and he was booked). The nurse at Urgent Care commented "I could hear you guys coming as soon as you stepped off the elevator!" That's how loud his breathing was. They got us in right away and then we left with the only advice being to give him Tylenol and Motrin (alternating every 3 hours) for the fever. The doctor also told us to "take him to his regular doctor if he was (that) bad on Monday." That was it. Nothing about the fact that he couldn't breathe!!

Saturday he was a little bit worse. He still had a high fever and his breathing had gotten worse. His stomach was really starting to suck in while he was trying to breathe. When I got home from work around 3:30, we decided to take him in to the ER (here in our town). As soon as we got there, they gave him steroids through an IV and then gave him a breathing treatment. That breathing treatment (Albeuterol) didn't work (I guess it doesn't normally work for Croup which is what he ended up having).

So, then they gave him a Racemic Epinephrine treatment to see if that would help. That helped some and he calmed down. However, after an hour and a half that started to wear off and his breathing got really bad again. I started to get a little worried when they started using words like "really acute" and "respritory distress". Then, the ambulance team came in. They decided to take him by ambulance to another hospital since they couldn't get his breathing under control.

We were sent to the children's hospital in a large city near here. Everyone there was so great! We were greeted with smiles and help the second we stepped off of the ambulance! They evaluated him in their ER and decided to admit him to try and get his breathing under control. It was about 7 hours, 3 Racemic Epinephrine treatments, a dose of Benadryl (he developed a rash from something while we were in the second ER) later that we were finally taken to a room. Tyson was beyond exhausted and had been poked, prodded and on oxygen so much that he didn't know what to do with himself!

He finally crashed around 1:00 AM. The only way he would sleep was if he was touching me...he was so scared and confused! Around 4:00 AM, he decided to pull out his own IV! He was still half asleep and just ripped off the bandage, tape and everything that was holding the needle in! The needle came out with it...there was blood everywhere! The nurses were so great--they came in and cleaned it all up and one of them even stayed to wipe his dog off so he could still sleep with it (it probably took her a good 20 minutes to get it clean!).

We finally got to go home the next day around 1:00. They had given him another dose of steroids that morning and since he didn't need any oxygen during the night, they said he would be fine going home. When Creighton came to the hospital that morning, he said "WOW! His breathing is SO much better!"

He (we!) spent the next couple of days taking it easy and taking lots of naps! Once he got caught up on sleep, he was even better!

Whew! It was all quite the experience! The nurse at the first ER commented that if we had waited until Monday like the Urgent Care doctor had told us, then Tyson "would have been dead by then!" This isn't the first time we have had trouble with that clinic/hospital. Needless to say, I think we'll be headed somewhere else next time we need Urgent Care (or any serious medical care!)!