short hospital stay

So, I know I am way behind on my posts, but I thought it was important to document our experience.

On the 9th Nina woke up with a runny nose and I didn't think much of it, she's a kid and that often happens. By evening, when we went to pick Larry up from the airport, she was wheezing pretty badly. It didn't improve significantly by Saturday and I decided to call our osteopath, Dr Maryanne Morelli, who has been working with Nina on her intermittent respiratory issues. Dr Morelli just happened to be in even though it was Saturday and asked if we could be in within a half an hour so we jumped into the car and saw her. She wasn't able to help significantly and told us that a typical amount of resps per minute in a toddler is 30; Nina was right around 50 and she was really working to breathe, using her whole belly and chest. Dr Morelli said that if it didn't get better we should take her to the hospital. By about 7 on Sunday evening we made the decision and headed to Children's.

We waited for about 15 minutes in the ER there, straight to triage, where Nina charmed the pants off of the nurse there. He said he was going to tell everyone about Shelf Beep's name (Nina's doll has had a few evolutions of her name). Within about 10 minutes after that Nina was on a nebulizer and breathing better but still wheezy. I had been worried about her blood oxygen level and they had this neat light thing that they taped to Nina's big toe that monitored her blood oxygen. It was always in the low end of normal, so I felt a lot better about that but am still glad we made sure, it's scary to think that Nina wasn't getting enough oxygen in her blood. After two nebulizer treatments they decided that Nina needed to be admitted over night. We told Larry to go home so that he could get some work in the next day and were moved upstairs to be admitted by 11 pm.

The nurses and doctors were really wonderful, though we were a little stir crazy by 3:00 the next day when I finally convinced them to discharge us. They were just giving Nina inhaler treatments and watching her, which I told them I could do just as well as they could, if not better. We stopped giving the prednisone on Friday and she was still a little wheezy but she seems completely clear now besides a little runny nose.

We went to see Dr Adema yesterday and he said she sounds much better and that though they gave her an asthma diagnosis he doesn't think it's a lifetime thing. He thinks that it's caused by a combination of airborne irritants stemming from the fires in October and exacerbated by the extra pollen and mold in the air from our unusually wet spring.

We are going to replace our carpets, probably with cork, as soon as we decide what brand to go with (what's most eco-and respiration-friendly). I have wanted to replace the carpet that came with the house anyway and it's good to have a reason to have to do it.