Sadbh had a horrible night
and spent most of it coughing. We were called down not long after midnight to
help out as she was having such a tough time.
While Katie and Julie
suctioned, I elevated the head of her mattress so it was tilted.
I took over from Julie at
5:30 and kept an eye on Sadbh for the next couple of hours. She woke up around
7:30 and Katie took over.
Since Sadbh was so sick,
Katie decided to work from home so she could help Caity if needed. This worked quite
well as Sadbh’s coughing persisted throughout the day.
She found it hard to keep
her food down due to all the coughing and later in the morning her temperature
started to rise.
By mid evening her
temperature was 103.7 and she had absolutely no energy.
She had no appetite and
since she had not eaten in a couple of hours we were starting to get very
worried.
Katie called her
pediatrician’s office and when they called back they advised that, due to her
trach, we should take her into urgent care at Children’s.
Thankfully Children’s is
only 10 minutes away so we bundled into the car and headed off.
After checking in with
urgent care we found out that they are not equipped to deal with trachs, so
they advised that we check into the emergency care. We were very hesitant due
to the high risk of exposing Sadbh to who knows what, however, the nurse we
worked with in urgent care was extremely helpful and secured us a room in ER so
we could bypass the standard ER check in process.
The ER team was great and really
took good care of Sadbh. She was well passed her bedtime by now and she was
getting very upset, however they gave her some crayons and pictures to fill in.
After running all her
regular tests, they suctioned her trach to get a culture for analysis. She ended
up giving a huge cough and launched a loogie that landed square on one of the nurse’s
forehead. Thankfully the nurse laughed about it and explained that it was one
of the things she was warned about in nursing school.
After that they took an X-ray
of her chest and lungs to see if there was a chance of pneumonia. After
reviewing the X-ray they could see a spot that indicated that she might
actually have pneumonia so they prescribed antibiotics, amoxicillin. Since none
of the local pharmacies were open when we finally left the hospital the doctor
gave Sadbh a dose to get her started.
When the nurse asked her to
open wide, Sadbh obliged and opened her mouth as wide as she could so the nurse
could give her the antibiotics.
We were finally discharged
shortly after midnight and Sadbh was fast asleep as soon as she was bucked into
her car seat.
Larissa was already at the
house and had everything set up and ready to go. She even changed out Sadbh’s
bed sheets.
We gave Sadbh a thorough
sponge bath, much to Sadbh’s annoyance, but she was off to sleep moments after
she was dressed in a clean pajamas.
Sadbh was a superstar all
day and despite moments of fussiness, she did great.
We are so lucky to have such
great night nurses. Julie really took great care of Sadbh last night, and
tonight Larissa jumped into action as soon as she heard that we had to go to
the hospital.
Now I’ve got to find a
pharmacy that’s open 24 hours so we can fill her prescription for her morning
dose.
All the best,
Wayne, Katie and Sadbh.
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