My mini blogging vacation turned into another hospital stay…

It’s 7am on December 31, 2012 and once again I find myself sitting in the ICU at CHOC watching Tiara sleep. In my last post I mentioned everyone was getting sick so I was taking a mini vacation from blogging because I sensed I was going to be spending most of my time taking care of my sick kids. I hate when my Mommy intuition tells me stuff I don’t want to hear.

So Trinity got a bad virus and of course Tiara and I both caught it. Thursday morning, Tiara and I both went to the walk in and got Tamiflu. It seemed to start working right away but Friday morning I noticed TT suddenly seemed to be getting worse. Her fever jumped to 103 and she was having a hard time breathing. I have seen this look on her face more times than I want to remember but I felt so sick myself I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around a trip to the ER.

Lou and Tabitha were both at work and Trinity was laying on the couch still sick as a dog when I realized I needed to move fast. I told Trinity to stay put and keep her cell phone on in case she needed me. I quickly grabbed all Tiara’s meds, diapers, the iPad, and her iPod and rushed her to the walk in clinic so he could quickly do a pulse oxygen level on her so I would know for sure if she needed the hospital. The doctor saw us within a minute and her oxygen level was between 88-92, not great. He offered to call Hoag hospital for us so she could get straight in and not have to wait. She has a history of crashing fast so I knew I didn’t have much time. It only took 15 minutes to get her from the walk in clinic into a bed an ER bed at the hospital. As the nurse started to set up all the monitors she realized Tiara’s oxygen had dropped to 76 and called a code. Everyone rushed in and started working on her and oddly enough I wasn’t scared or panicked. I had seen her like this many times before and knew she would be ok once she got on oxygen and iv antibiotics.

They eventually transferred us to the children’s hospital where she seemed to be doing well until Saturday night. I noticed in the afternoon she seemed more lethargic and called for a doctor. He assessed her but felt like they were doing everything they could to help get her better. He said they would keep a close eye on her.

I forgot to mention she has lots of areas of mucous on both sides of her lungs, hence serious bilateral pneumonia for which she is receiving oxygen, antibiotics and breathing treatments every 4 hours.

Earlier in the day she had gone to X-ray and hours later I realized that no one had plugged the monitor back into the wall so the nurse’s station would hear the alarm if it went off. For some reason I didn’t know where to plug it in and because I was so exhausted and sick myself I forgot about it until 8:00 pm that night. While the nurse was getting all her meds scanned into the computer I mentioned it to her and she said she would plug it in right after she finished what she was doing.

Once again we both got super busy caring for Tiara and we both forgot! Once Tiara fell asleep she kept having lots of long seizures which was freaking me out because she has only been having a few mild ones everyday. I guess I fell asleep and at midnight I heard the alarm beeping. I jumped up and checked to see if the lead had fallen off since that had been happening all day, but it was securely on. Her oxygen was at 84 and dropping quick. I started to feel a little panicky because no one was coming to help and I wasn’t sure what to do. I was disoriented from being woken so suddenly but realized it was an emergency and quickly waved down the first person who caught my crazed look when I stepped outside her door. Luckily we were right across from the nurse’s station, so they came quick.

A nurse pumped up the oxygen to full capacity but it wasn’t helping! The nurse called a rapid response code and for the second day in a row a whole team of people ran into her room and started doing everything they could to get her oxygen up. Finally after she was in the 70’s the respiratory therapist suctioned her mouth and throat and her numbers started improving. I was really shaking and upset but I knew I had to hold it together and answer all their questions since I was the only one in the room that knew the answers.

After everyone stood staring at her for a few more minutes trying to decide what to do next,the attending doctor declared “ she needs to be transferred to the ICU now, let’s go! We will put her on a special oxygen mask which will give her lungs more support.” This is the last step before a person has to be intubated.

So we are still in the ICU and the mask is working but the second you take it off to check her skin, her oxygen plummets. In addition they have needed to increase the settings several times so its seems as if she isn’t improving but isn’t intubated so that is good.

I finally figured out I needed a word processing app for my iPad so I could type this and keep you updated. This made me happy since I am sitting here watching her sleep, at least I can write my blog now. So keep the prayers coming and I will update as possible.

Happy New Year’s and be safe!!!

Xoxo Tiffani