Happy Weezer

Tuesday night Dodger kept waking up crying and saying that his tummy hurt, so I finally brought him to bed with us, which ended up with Andy sleeping on the couch, for some reason Dodger always kicks and hits him in our bed. In the morning Dodger was still saying his tummy hurt, but I just figured he was hungry, so I tried to get him to eat some breakfast. Then he started coughing and weezing, and I could tell that he was working hard to breath because when he would say something he would get short of breath. I started to get a little worried because this same thing happened about a year ago, and when I called our doctor to ask him what we should do he said that it's always better to not chance anything with little kids and respiratory problems. So I called the clinic and tried to get an appointment with ANYONE but of course no one had any openings. I called a few more times to see if there had been any cancellations, and when there hadn't I decided to call the other clinic. Luckily they were able to get us in that morning. Andy and I debated on whether or not we should keep the appointment because by then he was acting completely fine, except for his coughing and weezing. Finally we decided, why not and Andy took Bronx to his parents and I took Dodger to the doctor. After the nurse took his stats, she sent us back to our room to wait. Dodger was so excited to be at the doctor and was so happy and being such a good boy. When the nurse practitioner came in she did a few things, listened to his lungs, looked in his ears, and then told me that his oxygen level was 80, when it should be above 90. She said his breathing was really tight and she showed me how you can see on their ribs if they are having trouble breathing because you can see his ribs really good and there starts to be an indention where the ribs meet. The nurse also put a swab up Dodger's nose to check for RSV, which came back negative. They told me that I may need to help hold him down while they did it because he wasn't going to like it, but he just sat there and his eyes teared up a little bit, but that was all. I asked him if he was OK and just looked at me and shook his head yes. The Nurse Practitioner wanted to show the doctor and get his opinion too. When he came in he did all the same tests and then told me that we needed to get him to the emergency room because his oxygen was so low, and because he was having such a hard time breathing.
This all seemed so weird because he wasn't acting sick at all! He was so happy and smiling, the Nurse Practitioner kept calling him a "happy weezer". Before they sent us to the hospital they did a breathing treatment with Albuterol on him, and it helped so much! But by this point I was a little worked up and nervous, and I started crying to the poor nurse, when they tell you that you need to take your little boy to the emergency room it's a little scary.
Anyway, I wasn't able to get a hold of Andy until I was on my way down to the ER. I decided to take him to the hospital in Blanding so I could be closer to home and Bronx. Andy met us at the hospital with Bronx in tow about a half hour after I got there. Since they had just given him a breathing treatment before we left the clinic his levels all looked good when we got to the ER, but since the other doctor had been so worried about it they wanted to keep him there for a few hours and give him another treatment and some steroids to help strengthen his immune system. During all of this Dodger continued to be the best little guy. After we decided he was OK, Andy took Bronx home where his mom met him and put him down for a nap and Andy went back to work, and Dodger and I stayed at the doctor until they said he was good enough to go home. His levels kept dropping a little bit, but then they would go back up. So we hung out in the ER, luckily Andy left us his phone so we were able to watch Sid the Science Kid and snap a few photos.
When we left they gave us a prescription for some Albuterol and for a nebulizer, but Andy being Andy decided that our air compressor would work just as good, and believe it or not it did! It's been working awesome. We continued giving him breathing treatments a couple times a day for about 3 days. Bronx had a little bit of a cough, so I gave him a little bit too, just to be safe. The next day Andy had to take a shipment of Gallium up to SLC so I decided to take the kids and go with him. We figured it would be good for Dodger because he could just relax in the car and not run around, and plus he would for sure get a nap in. Ever since we took away his binki he won't nap. So we went up and back all in the same day. Andy has a little portable air compressor that he keeps in his truck that we used to give him some treatments in the car. It worked like a dream :)
I'm so thankful that we listened to that little voice telling us to take him to the doctor, even though he didn't seem sick. I'm so thankful for the awesome doctors for taking good care of my baby. I'm so thankful for Andy's mom for taking her whole day to take care of Bronx, clean my house AND do my dishes. I'm so thankful for Suzie for bringing us dinner so I didn't have to worry about cooking, especially because it was my first night as the 2nd counselor in the YW, and we had mutual. But mostly, I'm so thankful that my little boy's okay!




He didn't want me to take his picture, so he was hiding :)