The Incident

On the flip side of the great time Cameron had in Michigan, we also had a long night in the emergency room. Around 4:00 on Thursday morning she was coughing up a lot of flem. She has had a cough on and off for months and we were told it was due to sinuses draining. We went to the family room to watch TV while she had a cough suppressant sucker. I fell asleep and she woke me up at 6am wanting to go back to bed. All day Thursday she stayed on the couch and didn't move. She wasn't eating, drinking or going to the bathroom. At 3pm she had a fever of 103. An hour after I gave her Tylenol it was 104 so off to urgent care we went.

By the time they saw us her fever was down to 99. Her pulse ox (amount of oxygen in the blood)was 93 (normally 98-100) and her heart rate was 160 (should be closer to 100 for her age). They gave her a breathing treatment to try and raise her pulse ox and then took a chest X-ray. While she was getting the x-ray she vomited and her fever was back to 103. Her pulse ox was still 93 and the Dr. said it looks like she has bilateral pneumonia. He wanted her to go to the pediatric ER and felt she should be taken by ambulance.

She was fine in the ambulance, not scared and no apparent fever. The urgent care nurse gave her a stuffed polar bear and the paramedic gave her a little teddy bear. I rode in the ambulance with her and my parents met us at the hospital. They had me move her from the stretcher to the hospital bed and I could feel she was burning up again (temp back to 104). They hooked her all up to monitor her pulse ox, respiration and heart rate and gave her dose of Tylenol. Then we waited some more while the Dr. there looked over her xrays. They concurred with the pneumonia diagnosis.

I did my best to explain to her what was going to happen. They were going to put an IV in her hand and give her some fluid and dose of antibiotics. After that finished they kept the IV catheter in her hand and wrapped it up because we had to come back the next day for another dose of antibiotics.

Needles don't bother me, but trying to comfort my baby while the nurse fished the IV around in her hand and then had to try it again in her other hand - horrible. She was screaming and crying and saying "ouchie". It was breaking my heart.

We finally made it back to my parents house 8 hours after it all started. She was actually hungry when we got home and my mom made her a PB&J sandwich. You can see her hand wrapped up to protect the IV catheter.

The next day she was so much better, but she knew she had to go back to the hospital and that worried her. They gave her another dose of antibiotics, took the IV out and sent us on our way with a Rx for more antibiotics. Once she got that thing out of her hand she was like a different child. You could tell she felt so much better than she did the day before.