Lola had a great night and was discharged late this morning. We stopped by home to pick up Max and daddy, then rushed off to an important eye appointment which couldn’t be rescheduled (I’ll have to post more about all that later). We got home late after a long appointment and rush hour traffic, and then rushed around administering antibiotics and breathing treatments to two tired and cranky kids. It feels like we’re running a doctor’s office in our house; our kitchen counter looks like a pharmacy! But we’re home and (relatively) healthy so we’re happy, but tired. Goodnight!

• Max & Lola

Lola had another good day of progress. They switched her to oral antibiotics, decreased breathing treatments to every four hours (which we can do at home), and discontinued the IV hydration drip. She’s eating, drinking, going potty and acting like herself. As long as she maintains her vitals over the next 12 hours, the plan is to go home tomorrow.

Lola was in rare form this evening; cracking jokes, standing up in bed, throwing things on the floor. I told her if she didn’t cut it out she might get kicked out of here before she gets officially discharged.

• Max & Lola

It appears that in these last 36 hours (knock on wood) Lola has turned The Corner. They were able to wean her from 2 liters of oxygen flow to room air (no nasal cannula!), stop her IV fluids, and decrease breathing treatments to every 3 hours. She’s still working hard, but able to maintain normal vitals. The doctors are talking about sending her home on Monday. For that to happen we need to switch to oral antibiotics and make sure she tolerates those (both stomach-wise and infection-wise), and decrease breathing treatments to every 4 hours, which we can then continue at home. The most important thing is getting the antibiotics right so she doesn’t have a flare-up/re-infection once we’re home.

We had a nice day hanging out at the hospital; reading books, watching Christmas movies, eating picnic meals on her bed. It’s fun being at a dedicated children’s hospital – they do so much nice stuff for the kids. A few days ago a rolling mall came around and Lola was able to pick out Christmas presents for her parents (which they wrapped). Yesterday a library cart came by and let her pick out a book to read and take home. Today Santa Claus visited the hospital and all the kids got to pick out a toy. It seems every day someone is bringing by fun stuff; crayons, coloring books, stickers, bubbles, playdough, blocks. Unfortunately since Lola is in isolation she’s not able to leave her room (I went down to pick out her Santa present) or pet the therapy dogs :*( but everyone still does a great job of including her from a distance.

Max had a good day too. He still has a cough, but wasn’t acting too sick. Antibiotics 2X a day and breathing treatments every 4 hours. He had fun running errands with Brody this morning – they got to meet some firefighters who were out practicing with the hook and ladder truck. After we did our afternoon hospital switch, Max and I played legos for awhile, then watched Rudolph with hot chocolate and hot tea. Nothing productive, just hanging out. Now it’s time for some much-needed rest so we can tackle the next day to come.

• Max & Lola

Lola had a rough night and not-so-good morning. She was requiring more oxygen support and desatting more frequently. Brody stayed at the hospital last night and gave me the report this morning, and I was anxious as I drove to the hospital for the switch. Wonderfully, by the time I got there, Lola had seemed to turn a corner. Her oxygen sats were up, breathing and heart rates down. She ate a decent amount for lunch at dinner, walked to the bathroom to pee and was downright feisty by bedtime (“Go poop on your head!” -Lola).

They increased albuterol breathing treatments to every two hours which seem to be helping. They also started a therapy called assisted cough – a machine attached to a face mask that shoves a big breath of air into Lola’s lungs and then sucks it back out again. It’s supposed to get the mucus moving around and encourage Lola to cough on her own. She’s still on two different antibiotics and saline drip for hydration. At one point Lola was on 3 liters of oxygen flow, but they were able to wean that down to 1 liter by bedtime. Hoping for a good night and more improvements tomorrow.

Three Little Ella-phants

Unfortunately while I was chillaxing with Lola, Brody was having a rough afternoon with Max. First Max threw up all over both of them at the commissary at Brody’s work. Then Brody noticed that Max’s cough (which started this morning) was getting worse so they ended up at the pediatrician’s office. Max’s nasal swab came back RSV-negative (which the ped found hard to believe) but his lung x-ray was hazy with pneumonia and his O2 sats a little low, so he was sent home with antibiotics and breathing treatments of his own. What should have been Brody’s break from a sick kid ended up being more work than sitting here at the hospital. All I want for Christmas is a healthy family at home!

• Max & Lola

Lola had a pretty quiet first night in the hospital and was definitely more comfortable than Tuesday night at home. We both managed to get some sleep. She is about the same today as she was yesterday – stable, but breathing heavily and requiring some oxygen support via nasal cannula. Lola’s cough has become more productive, which isn’t good or bad, just the way an illness progresses. She has been able to cough up some mucus, but is absolutely miserable doing it. She has had a fever off and on, treated with Tylenol, which is also typical for this stage in an illness. She’s getting breathing treatments up to every four hours, as needed, and is still getting antibiotics and steroids. Lola hasn’t been eating or drinking much, so they have her on an IV saline drip to keep her hydrated.

One hopeful thing that the doctor mentioned is that if we can assume today is day five of Lola’s illness (symptoms started on Saturday), then viral illnesses usually peak at the 3-5 day mark, which is why we haven’t seen much improvement from yesterday. The doctors are hopeful that if this is the peak, and having had time for the antibiotics/steroids to kick in, we should start seeing improvement soon. If not, they may need to dig deeper to figure out what is going on. Day by day for now.

• Max & Lola

We had a harrowing night of labored breathing, fever spikes, every-four-hour breathing treatments, Tylenol administration and restless-to-no sleep. I spent the night counting Lola’s breaths per minute, trying to figure out if she was “getting worse” (40-50BPM). I knew that treating RSV at home would be miserable, but I also wanted to make sure that we pulled the ER-trigger at the right time. I finally got sick of the anxiety of subjective decision-making, and in the morning I sent Brody to pick up a home O2 monitor from the pharmacy. I knew it probably wouldn’t be as accurate as the doctor’s version, but when Lola’s reading came back at 91 I knew it was time to call the pediatrician.

They had us come into the doctor’s office to take a look at Lola, where her sats were 93-96 on the professional equipment. The doctor decided (thankfully) that this was too much for us to handle at home, and sent us to the ER for possible admission. The ER at noon on a Wednesday was blissfully empty, and we were ushered straight into an ER bed. The checked vitals, took a chest x-ray, and administered a triple dose of breathing treatments back-to-back-to-back. The chest x-ray was a little patchy (think, walking pneumonia) and Lola’s oxygen saturations were still in the low 90s, so they decided to admit us to the hospital overnight. While we waited for a hospital bed, they gave Lola an oral steroid and started her on two antibiotics (Ceftriaxone + Azithromycin), again, to treat/prevent a secondary illness from taking hold.

It took a long time to get into a hospital bed, but we were soon settled in and passed out from exhaustion. We are understandably anxious about a repeat hospitalization for pneumonia (RSV is related to hMPV, which is what sent us to the hospital in February) but, objectively, Lola is definitely not as sick [yet] as she was at this point of our hospitalization in February. The big question right now is where are we in the progression of this illness – just beginning? middle/peak? – and where does it take us from here? Questions that unfortunately we can’t answer right now.

• Max & Lola