RSV: Round Three

This past Sunday and Monday our little Mason spent some time in the hospital battling RSV and dehydration. Thursday afternoon I noticed that he was starting to get a runny nose and by that night he had a cough so bad that Jeff and I held him down and gave him a breathing treatment. I was up most of that night with him either rocking him or giving him a breathing treatment. By Friday I was sure that he had contracted RSV again, but didn't take him to the doctor because when he had had it in January they had told me to do breathing treatments. So every 4 or so hours throughout Friday I was giving my little man treatments. Saturday morning rolled around and he was only getting worse, so we took him into the doctor's office. The diagnosis was RSV and an ear infection. The nurse practitioner had seen him and I was surprised that she hadn't given us a prescription to go to the Bronchiolitis Clinic at the hospital. (It is an outpatient clinic where you can go and have deep suctioning done and oxygen levels checked.)

By midnight that night, Mason had gotten pretty severe so Jeff and I decided to run him into the ER at Riverton to see if they would suction him out. My mom was in town visiting and was willing to stay home with our other boys. We got to the hospital about 1:30 Sunday morning and around 4:00 AM he was admitted for hypoxia. Last year we were at Riverton when they couldn't get his oxygen up and they sent us to Primary Children's. I figured they were going to send us there again, but they informed me that in November they had opened the fourth floor of the hospital up as an extension of Primary Children's. So I guess technically he was in Primary Children's...but at the Riverton location. It was nice to be in a brand new facility!

Once in his room, Mason's oxygen levels stabilized. We thought we were going to get to come home about 2:00 the next day. Throughout Sunday Mason refused to eat or drink anything. It became so bad that about 7:00 that night the doctors decided to insert a feeding tube. After they got the tube into him, he reached up and pulled it out. So they inserted it a second time and taped it well to his face and back. After we settled him down, I sat down to rock him. They had decided to feed him milk and the first time it hit his tummy, he threw up all over me. While I was cleaning up, Jeff was rocking him and he seemed to take the milk well for about five minutes. Then he started gagging and coughing and threw up so hard that the feeding tube came out his mouth. After that the doctor decided to remove the tube and try an IV. It took them about 45 minutes and several tries to get the IV to go in. My poor little baby was so drained from all of this, plus the deep suctioning they had done to him that he slept very well that night. Monday morning he started eating again and we were able to go home about 1:00 yesterday. Ironically, he was released from the hospital on the same day he was released last year. My poor little man! Within the last year he's had RSV three times and two of those times its put him in the hospital. I am hoping he is finally on the mend and that this is our last stay in the hospital!

(Sorry, no pictures. My camera is officially broken, but the good news is that by the end of the week I should have a brand new SLR in my hands!)