In the ER

Trying to put on a happy face.

Wow, where do I begin? Early this morning Arianna woke up very fussy and with labored breathing. I immediately checked her pulse ox and she was at 83%. I stayed up monitoring her and her numbers remained low and even dipped into the high 70's. I put a call into one of the cardiologists from the clinic and he said she was in respiratory distress and I needed to take her immediately to the ER.


When we got there she was satting at 84% and they put her on oxygen. They checked her sats again and was in the high 90's. We waited for 2 hours with a screaming baby just to wait another 2 hours before they did chest x-rays to see if she had pneumonia. The doctor, who by the way is a total ass, told me her x-ray wasn't good and showed some hazziness. She said this can either be pneumonia or signs of heart failure. So at this time we were really freaking out. They started breathing treatments and were going to start antibiotics. The breathing treatments really seem to help but only for a short period of time. She has been so miserable all day long and just cries and cries. By this time they had to up her oxygen to 4 liters to hold her numbers in the high 90's. They said she was going to be admitted but they were waiting for a room. They were going to call pediatric cardiology but they wanted to wait until we got situated in our room on the peds floor. Well hours go by and we were still sitting in the ER so they called the pediatric doctor to come evaluate Arianna. While giving her history Arianna seemed to be getting worse and worse. She was just laying flat on he back, staring at the ceiling with no expression on her face. Her numbers began to drop and she started looking pretty bad, they dropped to 74%....you better believe that got someones attention. I think this doctor, who is a resident, was scared out of her mind. By this time Arianna still hadn't received her antibiotics, no one had bothered to do anything for her. I am so glad this doctor was in the room when this happened. She immediatly had the attending ER doc in the room who was telling her that Arianna had already received her antibiotics. At that point I looked at her and wanted to slap her, I told her that she hadn't recieved anything and the nurses hadn't even started an IV. They told me that peds cardiology was called and Dr. Barber was on his way to do an echo. This was the same cardiologist who took care of her when she was born. So anxiously we sat here praying she wasn't in heart failure. The echo came back good, well good for her condition. Her left ventricle was vigourusly working, the right ventricle had more muscle thickening, and she has severe pulmonary insuffiency, but NO HEART FAILURE!! Thank God!

They are now thinking it has to be pneumonia, but NO ONE will confirm or deny that. They are still still giving her antibiotics. They wanted to check for sepsis because she had some signs of that, just upped her albuterol treatments to q. 2, which means, every 2 hours, and still on 4 liters of oxygen. They are hoping with a few days in the hospital getting fluids and oxygen that this will go away and we can taper her off the oxygen.

To top things off the peds floor is full so we are spending the night in the ER. Thankfully we are in a private room and sharing a bed together. So between the waking up every 2 hours for treatment and the loud ER, it will be a long night. I'm sure I forgot to type something, but its midnight and I need to try and sleep before they come in at 1am for her next treatment. We plan on being her for a few days, but I have the laptop so I'll keep you posted.