by I took today off work, I didn’t sleep well and wasn’t feeling 100%. I figured I’d sleep it off and hopefully head up whatever I was fighting against at the pass.
Around 1230 or so AJs nurse woke me up, something was wrong, though we weren’t sure what. She started to set up for a trach change and I grabbed things to bag him.
He was very blue. Shaking. Cold. His lower lip was quivering. And generally he just was not doing not well. I called 911, and ultimately when our first responder team arrived he was in bad enough shape that they asked the ambulance to step it up and get there faster.
Trach change didn’t help. Bagging him didn’t help. Turning his oxygen up to 6 liters didn’t help. Albuterol neb didn’t help. Nothing was ultimately helping. His heart rate hit the 180s. That’s 3 beats per second and roughly twice his norm.
We hopped into the ambulance and headed to Iowa City as soon as we could. Around halfway through the journey he calmed down a little and we were able to turn his oxygen back down to 1 liter. He was still pretty lethargic and his breathing was erratic and fast.
Fast forward to now. We’ve been in the ED for probably 3 hours. His EKG was fine. X-ray was fine. Cultures have all been fine thus far. His breathing has regulated and aside from being unhappy about having an IV in his hand, he’s contently taking a nap. The only thing “wrong” so far has been a fever, which has come down after Tylenol – but he’s also hot blooded like his daddy and always runs a fever after cuddling.
Needless to say, we have no direct answers on what happened. He may have overheated while sleeping. He may have been pissed off and clamped down and had a PH episode that escalated as it continued. Maybe it was both. Or maybe it was something else entirely.
This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen him in a state like that, but it was the first time I could see the fear in his eyes and could tell he knew something was wrong. I’m sure he could sense how the rest of us felt too despite trying to stay calm. A cold, limp, convulsing kid isn’t fun for anyone, especially when he can’t tell you what’s going on even if he wanted to.
Incredibly thankful for his nurse, who woke me up from my nap and helped me do everything we could, for the 911 operator (who could tell this wasn’t our first rodeo and got our info and kicked things off right away and let me off the phone), for the first responders who always get to our door quickly (and who know our kiddo well enough at this point that we don’t have to give a crazy medical history), for the ambulance team that come over from Belle Plaine and their paramedic (who knows him well too), for the ER staff who are used to us by this point as well, for Amy for snagging Averie despite having other plans, and for whatever reason it was that I felt crappy this morning and stayed home – not that I don’t think our nurse could have handled it, but because when he has a moment like that it’s so much better to have two sets of hands.
Praying that as we head home in a few minutes we don’t have a repeat episode at home, that we go back to status quo, and hopefully stay there!
As a side note – I miss the old coffee shop in the hospital, the new one isn’t the same, and we’ll be sending over a list of app recommendations for the ER iPads – AJ is bored out of his mind and most of them require using your hands, which he doesn’t have use of when they’re bundled up with an IV.
