ER Trip

So the breathing treatments didn't help so much and by Thursday evening, Asher's condition became worse. His head...hot, his body...lethargic, his breathing...labored and I started to panic as I watched my baby seem to slip into a very sick state. After a steam shower which did nothing, I decided to call my neighbor who is a Med-Peds physician. She came over and listened to Asher's breathing and sent me straight to the ER. Now keep in mind, Austin is in Dallas, TX, stuck in ice storms, (in fact the airports were completely shut down with no opening in sight), it's 9pm and Asher is getting worse. Thankfully my mom was here to take care of Braden, so off I go to the ER, thinking that they would give him a few breathing treatments and that we would be home by midnight. As I walk into the ER and I see frantic parents, restless kids and no empty seats, I realize it is going to be a long night. When I checked in, there were 20 people ahead of me, but due to Asher's worsening condition, they triaged me back to a room and within minutes, there were a team of doctors standing over Asher ordering all kinds of things. When the doctor began talking about chest x-rays, oxygen levels that were quickly dropping and high fever that at this point we haven't been able to break, I started to panic. They immediately put him on 4 hours of breathing treatments...yep, 4 hours of me sitting in a rocking chair, holding a face mask up to my poor baby as he lay helpless on my chest and praying that his little body would begin to work properly again. It was at that point, that I think I realized that this night was in fact going to be a very long one that I would have to face on my own. As the night drug on and hour, after hour passed the doctors discovered that Asher had some pneumonia settling in his chest. They x-rayed his chest, put him IV antibiotics, oxygen masks to help his body maintain proper oxygen levels, he received breathing treatments every 2 hours (after the initial 4 hour treatment) and then they stuck these huge tubes down his nasal cavity in hopes to suction some of the fluid out. As each procedure went on and they pulled Asher out of my arms and he locked eyes with me, screaming, I found myself helpless. As I turned my face each time from the nurses so they wouldn't see my fear and my tears, I longed for Austin. He was miles away, stuck in the airport. It really was such a hard night...one that I won't soon forget. I held Asher tight, hour after hour and finally at 4:30am, they brought me a cot to sleep in and told me to settle in because they were admitting us for the next 36-48 hours. Thankfully, Asher responded well to the treatments and we only had to stay in the hospital for a total of 36 hours...so thankful for modern medicine and nice, child friendly hospitals! Austin made it by 6pm Friday night and we were home by noon on Saturday morning. All in all, a long, scary couple of days, but I am so thankful that God looked over Asher and healed his body quickly.

Here is Asher all hooked up to his breathing machine (for some reason I cannot get this picture to blow up, maybe because it was taken from my phone) -
Sweet little boy in his Vandy Children's Hospital jammies -
Well, the good news in all of this is that this guy has decided that when he grows up he no longer wants to be just a fireman...now he wants to be a doctor and a fireman. He literally plays doctor every day now and wears his stethoscope around his neck for hours on end. Last week, Braden even went grocery shopping with me, wearing his stethoscope. Now if Dr. Braden could only figure out how to keep us healthy for a few weeks!