All is well

Kaden is currently inpatient at Elliot Hospital. He is fast asleep right now in room 4 of the PICU. It's slightly ironic that after being hospital free of for 18 mo, we end up in the PICU. But he's moving in the next hour or so to the regular floor. So basically it seems our young man has a virus that caused his respiratory system to go haywire. His antics were very strange. Typically if a kid has low oxygen, there are warning signs: labored faster breathing, blueness in the lips or nailbeds, higher heart rate, nasal flaring, retractions in the abdominal area, neck, or testicles. ( my first and last likely blog mention of testicles) Alas, Kaden had none of this going on, he was sleeping peacefully with a completely normal heart rate. He was pink. He looked great, but his monitor told a different story. I was confused and sought some advice from a few RN friends. They said he sounded fine, maybe the monitor was off...but to trust my gut. His oxygen requirements kept increasing and then we got worried. We decided that we needed to bring him to the ER. because he was on a high lpm of oxygen, we called 911. When the EMT's arrived they commented he looked fine. But yes, his oxygen was reading way low. So off Rich and Kaden went to the ER. At the ER, Kaden continued to decline, needing 16 liters of oxygen to keep him in the high 80's. That is not good all. But the crazy child continued to look and act totally fine. His chest X-ray was clear. By stethoscope, you could hear air moving fine through his lungs. It didn't make clincial sense. He was sent up to the PICU and put on high flow oxygen which is similar to CPAP. And that seemed to work. After a while, he felt better and would no longer tolerate the high flow and pulled it off every 5 seconds (literally). And now, he's basically back to normal....just needing oxygen.

Honestly I don't know what to think of our Kaden boy, this is a new trick from him, he's been sick, has an ear infection.

But I am thankful for our monitor. Pretty sure he's gonna be wearing that thing at night for the next few months to make sure he doesn't do this again. And follow up with pulmonary here at the Elliot.

But we are good. So thankful for our little boy, for the wonderful team of care, and our loving and supportive friends and family who have taken such good care of us. We are so blessed. In the good and in the bad, we are blessed.