Our Poor Kid

Well in case severe dairy and egg allergies weren't enough, Corbin has now been official diagnosed with asthma. No, actually he has been diagnosed with "Reactive Airway Disease" because in this day and age we like to be politically correct and it doesn't sound good to label a toddler with such a harsh, chronic condition. So we call it RAD until he gets older, and then it becomes asthma.

Anyway... he had a runny nose when we put him to bed Thursday night. Then he woke up around midnight and was screaming and shrieking all night long, until finally I couldn't take it anymore and as soon as morning hit I called to take him into the pediatrician. Well the problem is we just switched insurances and along with that had to find a new doctor, and since Corbin hasn't had a well child check up since then they wouldn't see him. So that meant I had to take him to the instacare instead.

We showed up and a young nurse was trying to take his vitals, but she couldn't get the heart rate monitor to read on his foot correctly so she went to get some help. As soon as the older nurse came in to assist she took one look at his chest heaving and called the doctor straight in as well as oxygen tanks and albuterol treatments. Then as soon as they had him on the drugs and oxygen they called an ambulance and had him transported down to Primary Children's Hospital. All the while they forgot to fill me in on what was happening until I got all chocked up and the doctor finally realized he should probably update me on his condition. I guess he was having an asthma, make that a RAD, attack. I don't remember the exact numbers because I was too worried about figuring out what was happening to listen to everything, but I overheard them say that his oxygen saturation levels were somewhere around 80% (they are suppose to be around 95%, I think) which has caused his heart rate to increase to around 220 beats per minute, which is not good.

The ambulance brought us to the emergency room where they monitored him, but even with the steroid treatments they couldn't get his oxygen levels to stay above 90% (the magic number needed to be able to leave the hospital) without the oxygen tanks. So eventually they had to admit him for an overnight stay.

The next day was no different, his condition didn't worsen, but he didn't seem to be improving. However with our high deductible and 80/20 insurance the bill was really starting to add up so we told the doctor we would rather take him home and treat him there, so they ordered some home care and portable oxygen tanks for him and we were suppose to get the final check for discharge at 4:00 pm.

However, come 4:00 they took him off of the oxygen to see how he did and he kept it up at about 90-92% all by himself. So then they asked us to stay a few more hours and if he could maintain it they would send him home with some prescriptions, but no oxygen. So by 7:00 he got the all clear and we brought our kid back home.

So this was possibly the worst 32 hours of Corbin's life as he screamed from the time that oxygen tank showed up until around 2:00 pm when things finally calmed down and they got things figured out a little better (then he only screamed every 2 hours when they came to check on him and hook up that darn face mask again). He hated all of the poking and prodding and all of the tubes and face masks (you'll notice in the picture he has on about 3 layers of tape keeping that tube in his nose because he kept yanking it out). He even broke one of the monitors when he pulled the sensor off. But he was a little trooper all things considered.

The worse part for me, aside from the obvious, is that being hooked up to monitors and oxygen he could basically sit on his bed or in my lap next to the bed and that is it. Trying to entertain a toddler with two books, two toys and three stuffed teddy bears for that long gets exhausting. He constantly begged to get "dow" nonstop. At one point they let us take off the monitors and got an extension on his oxygen thing so he could wander around the room. That seemed to appease him until one of the nurses left the door open and then he stood there in the doorway with his cord stretched as far as it could go whimpering and saying "hi" to every nurse that passed until one lady took pity on him and brought him one of those little yellow and red, flinstone style cars that kids sit in and pad around in, along with a portable oxygen tank so he could go up and down the hall. But that almost made it worse since Corbin is the kind of kid that the "If you give a mouse a cookie..." book was written after. It wasn't long before he kept pushing his limits and trying to get more and more freedom until he finally had to just go back into his room because he wouldn't obey anymore and was starting to cause problems for the hospital staff.

The other highlight of our stay was that I seriously had to give Corbin's medical history about 10 times. They wrote it all down in meticulous notes each time, but I am not sure what they did with it beyond that (obviously they didn't make photocopies of it, since everyone needed to get it again themselves). But they clearly didn't refer to it either, because the first time he asked for a snack to eat they brought him cheese and crackers. Slices of real cheddar cheese. Now, I enjoyed eating them, but really, shouldn't a hospital pay a little bit of attention to these kinds of things?

So then I pointed this out and they informed me that in the ER they usually don't handle snack requests, but upstairs once he got officially admitted they would have a dietitian that would have to sign off on everything they gave him. Okay, I guess that makes since, and the guy was really nice and went to get Bean some fruit from the employee lounge instead. But sure enough EVERY single meal that they brought him had something dairy on the tray. I was thinking we should have just slipped him some, after all he was in a hospital and they could treat him with epinephrine right away so he would be fine, but then we could sue the hospital and get enough money to cover this ridiculously expensive stay, but my dang integrity got a hold of me and I decided not to use my child like that :)

So basically this weekend's mini vacation was suppose to be a trip to ride the kiddie train in Farmington and play mini golf, but instead we spent our time cooped up in a hospital. At least we are already used to carrying around an epi pen everywhere we take Corbin, now we just add a fast acting inhaler to that. He is definitely going to be the weird kid at school.