Monday, May 29, 2006

Midnight run to ER

Lucas had been sick with the stomach flu since last week. But Saturday it started morphing into something else because he developed this horrible cough. And early this morning around 2, Lucas woke up and was having a difficult time breathing and was shaking all over. It was very scary so we called 9-1-1.

The ambulance ride over to Children's Hospital was definitely the highlight of the experience. Lucas perked up, stopped shaking, and started chatting up a storm with the EMT. There was a cranefly in there with us, which was a big topic of conversation for Lucas. We were seated backward, looking out the back of the ambulance and seeing the lights of the other cars behind us on the road was cause for lots of excitement.

During the 3-hour wait in the waiting room Lucas was pretty much back to his normal self, aside from the hacking cough and a 105 fever. In fact, he was really enjoying himself, most likely because:
1) It was in the middle of the night.
2) The TV was on (episode after episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air)
3) He got to eat junk food from the vending machine and mowed through a whole bag of chips.

The fun stopped suddenly around 5am when we were admitted to a room and they took blood and inserted an IV. He really worked himself up into a frenzy as the bloodwork was performed. It got worse when we went upstairs to have his chest x-rayed. They basically had to strap him down to this piece of plexiglass and I had to leave the room during the x-ray. They also put a catheter on him so they could take a urine sample. But I think he was so freaked out about the whole experience, he didn't pee the entire time we were there.

The doctors were checking for pneumonia or a blood infection. Not words you want to hear about your kid.

After the x-ray, Lucas napped off and on until about 9am. The emergency room is not the most restful place, even in your own room with the lights off. We could hear a lot of crying and screaming, and general banging around.

Fortunately, the tests came back negative, though they said he has mild pneumonia, which cannot be detected on an x-ray, and an ear infection. The ear infection sounded odd to me. He never once has complained about his ear hurting and I've never seen him even tug at his ear. Regardless, the antibiotics will hopefully kill both in one fell swoop.

This evening, Lucas definitely started getting his appetite back. For dinner he ate a small cheeseburger with lots of ketchup and then a small bowl of cereal and milk.

Hopefully we're on the road to recovery.

1 comment:

RookieMom Whitney said...

sunny, this is awful. i'm so sorry. what a crazy week.