Back in Hospital

Well, it has been just over a month since our last visit to the emergency department for a respiratory illness and Ethan had been doing well since his discharge from hospital.

Then the last Wednesday in February, while he was at school, he got sick several times. When he came home, he was fine, he just had an occasional barky, wet sounding cough. Thursday and Friday morning he got sick once first thing in the morning and continued to have this occasional barky cough. We increased some of his medications and he seemed to be improving the next three days without any emesis. On Tuesday, after we thought we were on the road to recovery, he started to throw up again and was starting to look like he was coming down with another respiratory illness. Wednesday he was still throwing up several times a day and in the afternoon his nose started running, he was sneezing lots and he wouldn't stop coughing. At bedtime he was really starting to work hard to breathe and was pretty agitated with anyone doing anything to him (giving him his usual puffers or changing his diaper or repositioning him). I was starting to get quite concerned with his health but we waited to see if he would settle through the night. Which he did not! By Thursday morning he'd had a really rough night, was still working really hard to breathe and was not tolerating much of his food. We decided to head to the emergency room to have him checked over anticipating he would likely be admitted to hospital.

And admitted he was. He is back in critical care on 50% oxygen but doing pretty well at keeping his oxygen saturations high. He is improving but still working hard to breathe. He has been able to rest a couple times and goes into deep periods of sleep.

About the only thing that is good about showing up at the hospital in cold and flu season is how quickly they are able to provide results for respiratory illnesses. He is RSV positive, so they want to keep a good eye on him. He tested positive for RSV in March of 2011 and was quite ill from that. He still looks so very thin (may have lost even more weight). We restarted his feeds and are working to increase his calories.