the hospital: round two

Our poor little Jackson! It started with a little cough on Saturday night and after a long night of coughing and no sleep, it progressed quite aggressively into every 2 hour breathing treatments. Once it gets to that point you can pretty much just sign yourself up for a hospital stay.

When we got to the emergency room all I had to say was, "My son is an asthmatic and he is having trouble breathing." They took him right back. Of course, one of the first things they do is check his pulse/ox. It was 76. Not good. He got a nebulizer treatment immediately and an IV to start the steroids. Within 15 minutes of arrival they were finding him a bed in the pediatric ward for our second hospital stay in two months.

Between the nebulizer treatments and the IV steroids, Jackson, was in a rare state of W.I.R.E.D. and completely exhausted. One minute he would be fussy and just want to be held and snuggled and the next he would be bouncing off the walls trying to figure out how to escape.

Here is a glimpse of the insanity.

Breathing treatments.

Eat plenty of snacks.

Discover a new hang out.


Sleep: sweet relief!

Can we go home yet?

Push the IV cart around.

Rearrange the furniture.

After exhausting all these options, Jackson, would turn to me and say, "A go-go?" And I in turn would have to break his heart and tell him, "Not yet." Then the ritual would start all over again. Needless to say we were so excited when we finally got to go home.

dropping the "A" bomb

So, the doctors finally dropped the "A" bomb on us. That's right Jackson has asthma. For pretty much the last year, Jackson, has had trouble breathing and seemed to catch everything that went around, even when the rest of the family was healthy. There were several times he was put on prednisone (steroids) to help him breath when the albuterol nebulizer treatments were not helping enough. After awhile they added duo-nebs into the mix (a double bronchodilator) that is taken through the nebulizer.

Well, a couple of days ago, after trying all the tricks the doctors had up their sleeves to help Jackson breath it was finally determined he needed to be hospitalized to get him stabilized. The poor guy had double ear infections and a fever of 104 degrees which was making his heart race. Add the breathing treatments into the mix and his little body was working w-a-y too hard.

Despite absolutely hating the idea of my little man in the hospital I felt very blessed that modern medicine was able to help Jackson. While in the hospital Jackson was able to receive the steroids and antibiotic (for his ears) through his IV and they worked so much faster. Jackson was diagnosed with the ear infections on Wednesday morning and by Thursday morning they were mostly cleared up. After two days the infection was completely gone. Isn't modern medicine amazing? When Jackson only needed breathing treatments every four hours instead of every two he was okay ed to go home. We were grateful it was a short stay of a day (even though when you are in the hospital it seems much longer). We feel so blessed for the wonderful nurses and doctors who took such good care of Jackson. And to our friends, Kristen and Ryan, for taking care of Madelynne, so Mommy could stay at the hospital with Jackson. A thousand thank yous for being part of our "Cleveland Family". We don't know what we would do without you!

Here is what Jackson's crib at the hospital looked like. It looked more like a cage for circus animals to me and it made me sad to put him in there. I am glad I was able to stay with him or he would have just been trapped in there the whole time since the nurses can't just hold him the whole time since they have other patients to tend.

Even though Jackson didn't feel good you can still see a smile peeking out from behind his sookie. Apparently they didn't have any blue jammies available and he was stuck wearing these peach ones. He really didn't like them and kept trying to take them off. I don't blame him. When you don't feel good you just want to be in your own bed with your own jammies.

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We are so glad to have all of this behind us and to get back to normal life.