Our Hospital Visit

Well as you can see I haven't blogged for a while and that's because things have been crazy around here.  First, I was sick (while my parents were visiting), then Cole got sick (more on that later) and now Nick is sick...so we've been just trying to just keep things together around here.  Unfortunately, when Cole gets sick it usually involves a cough and that cough can sometimes turn into something much more serious.  Earlier this fall he had pneumonia, which surprised me at the time b/c his cough/cold didn't seem much worse than usual other than a high fever off an on over the course of a few days.  Well, I should have spotted it right away this time when he started spiking a fever on Sunday. But, because he was doing so well on Monday, I thought he would be fine.  Well, Monday night the high fever came back, this time much worse.  I called the on-call doctor twice that night because I couldn't keep his temp down with the maximum doses of tylenol and Motrin (as it turns out, Cole gained weight since his last visit and his dosage amount has increased, so I was giving him only 3/4 of what he can get).  I finally took him in to the doctor on Tuesday when he was still throwing up and his temp was still elevated.  The doctor saw us around 3PM.  His temp was 104 and he was breathing rapidly (his breathing was more labored than it should have been) and I'd already given him some fever reducer.  The doctor observed Cole for over an hour and decided to send us to the ER for further observation.  She didn't like how he was breathing.  At the ER, they did a chest x-ray and determined he had pneumonia in both lungs.  With the combination of all his symptoms and b/c he had pneumonia before they chose to admit him for the night.  They were able to start the antibiodics that night and they gave him fluids thru IV (at this point he hadn't kept anything down for 24 hrs).
Cole did amazingly well that night, considering he had tubes coming out of him on all sides, he was in a strange bed, in a strange room, with people poking and prodding him all night.  We had his bear and blankie with us and when I went home to get my stuff for the night, I grabbed his CD player and several CDs.  Between all of this, we managed to make him feel comfortable and he slept the whole night even when they came in to give him ear drops, breathing treatments and all!  He did spike a temp again that night and I was more than happy just to push the nurse call button and let them take care of it!:-)
The next day we saw a parade of doctors (most of them in training, so we got a lot of repeat questions and observations), but we did see a lung specialist who will continue to monitor Cole on a regular basis.  The conclusion at this point is that he has some form of reactive airway disease that causes the tubes in his lungs to be inflamed, which traps liquid in his lungs.  He is on a daily breathing treatment for now and we will know more as time goes by.  We kept him home from daycare for the rest of the week.  His grandmother, Sally, watched him three days last week, which was a great help!  I think Cole will miss his special days with Grammy when he goes back to school:-)