Popsicles Anyone?

Atticus has had a cough for about a week now. When he woke up this morning, I noticed he was having trouble breathing... It mostly just sounded like he didn't want to breathe in because it would make him cough. (I do that too when I have a cough.)

After breakfast we were sitting reading a book together and I realized he was breathing really fast as though he had been running around or something. He does have Asthma so I gave him a dose of his rescue inhaler. No improvement. I tried calling his doctor but they couldn't get him an appointment today. Our doctor's office is also a Walk-in Clinic so I decided to just take him there. We had to wait for the babies to wake up from their morning nap to go.

By the time the babies woke up, Atticus could barely finish a sentence without having to gasp for breath. So right away I decided to rush him to the hospital instead of going to the Walk-in.

So we get to the Children's hospital and I rushed him into Emergency. There was quite a line up when we got there. A triage nurse was going through the line up to give out numbers and triage forms. When I told her why we were there, she put a monitor on him to see his vital signs and his pulse ox. was down to 83. She said Oh My God! Which really freaked me out! lol

She took us back behind the triage desk where someone (A doctor or nurse) Picked him up and bolted out of the room with him. The nurse told me to follow him. And he was running!!  It was like a crazy ER scene where they basically plopped him on a bed and put all these monitors and machines and masks on him. There were people rushing around everywhere. I was so nervous and scared! I really wasn't expecting that to happen.

As soon as his pulse ox. was back up, A respiratory therapist came in with some inhalers for him. With Atticus screaming the entire time, he did 5 puffs from each inhaler every 20 minutes. This took about two hours to do. The respiratory therapist should NOT have been working with kids. He was so bad with Atticus. Just stern and straight to the point. Atticus didn't like  him at all. He also gave him some oral steroids which apparently tasted really bad. So that didn't help the situation at all.

Then some other doctors did another assessment and he had turned the corner. He was so much better than when we got there. They sent him down for an X RAY. He was really good for that. The nurse had stickers! lol

It turns out He has pneumonia mostly in his right lung. He has been put on Antibiotics for 10 days and oral steroids for the next two days. He also has to take his preventative inhaler 2x a day now.

It was such a challenging day. This was Atticus' first trip to the ER. It was rough. The fact that Chad left yesterday made it even harder on all of us. The twins were so good. The just sat there in the stroller making eyes at all of the nurses and eating their snacks. All of the staff were  totally in love with them.

They kept us a little longer just to watch Atticus. So he got to sit in bed eating popsicles and watching Treehouse. I'd rather not disclose the number of popsicles he got was able to get from the nurses. Let's just say his face was a rainbow when we left and that stuff doesn't come off!! lol And now he calls it The Popsicle Place.