It's already been 2 weeks since our nightmare of a week began! I can't believe that it has already been 2 weeks! But I am so glad that it is already 2 weeks in the past. What we went through just 2 weeks ago is something I never want to go through again.
About 3 weeks ago we all started getting sick with a nasty cold. Fist Jesse got it, then Walter, then I did, and then poor Oliver did. It was a nasty one, it knocked each of us out for a good 2 days but we all started slowly improving.. except Oliver. He had gotten a cough on Friday, and by Sunday he was running a fever of 102, wouldn't sleep at all, and wouldn't really eat. His eyes were glazed over and you could just tell he was miserable. When Monday came around and he was still running a fever, we decided it would be best if I took him into the doctor to get checked. I honestly thought he just had an ear infection or something. So that morning I took him to the Instacare. The nurse got his weight and height and then started checking his oxygen levels. She hooked the little device up to him and within just a minute or so her face became really concerned and she quickly got up and left the room... that was enough to freak me out. She came back with another nurse and that nurse took one look at the screen and walk out with a worried look on her face. Neither of them had said anything to me yet, so I was freaking out. Well the second nurse comes back and tells me that they are going to call us an ambulance and transfer him to the hospital because his oxygen levels are so low. I was completely shocked to hear that and I just started to cry. The nurse decided to try a breathing treatment with him before she called the ambulance, but that did nothing for him, so it was back to getting him transferred to the hospital. I hurried and called Jesse and told him what was about to happen, he was shocked as well. Within about a minute of them calling, the ambulance showed up and about 10 people came into the tiny exam room and started hooking Oliver up to monitors and oxygen. It was intense and I was not handling it very well. They strapped his car seat onto a gurney and quickly strapped him into the car seat and we were off. This was all happening so fast and I had no time to process what was going on, I'm surprised I still remember any of it. I was able to ride in the back with him and within just a couple minutes we were at Davis Hospital. We were taken to the ER, I let Jesse know where we were and he was there within just a few minutes. The nurses came in and suctioned him out and just had him on some oxygen.
They tested him for RSV, which came back positive, and then we were admitted and moved to a room upstairs. We all thought that we would be there for just a night or two and then would go home. We spent most of the day just hanging out in the hospital room, with Oliver hooked up to oxygen, and I was to make sure he ate enough to stay hydrated.
The nurse that we had was so great and made sure to check on him often. Later that evening, the nurse noticed that his breathing was getting heavier and he seemed to be getting worse. He told us that he did not feel comfortable keeping Oliver at this hospital where they did not have more powerful oxygen settings to put him on. He told us about how Primary Children's Hospital had much better equipment to help him breathe easier. He told us that he would be calling for the life flight team at Primary Children's to come and transfer us. I completely lost it. From that point on, I was a total mess. Life light came at about 11 or midnight and again got him strapped to a gurney and we were off for the second time that day. I was able to fly with him and Jesse drove separately. That was definitely not how I wanted my first helicopter experience to go. The flight only took 10 minutes, but it seriously felt like hours. Oliver looked so small and scared and in pain, it was just awful. We landed and went to ER at Primary Children's. They wanted to monitor him in the ER for a while to decide if he should be admitted to the regular pediatric wing or if he needed to go to the PICU. Jesse arrived at about 1 in the morning. Oliver was put on something called hiflow, which is just high powered oxygen. It was decided that he would go to the regular wing, even though he wasn't doing so great. We got up there at about 4am, but our stay there didn't last long. He was clearly getting worse and they said that he would need to be put on an even more intense oxygen setting and would need to go to the PICU. By 6am Tuesday morning, we had made it to the PICU and Oliver was getting settled into his new "room", which was just a bed that had curtains on either side and babies on the other sides on the curtains. From 1am til 6am, I was a complete mess and could not stop bawling. To see my baby so uncomfortable and so upset was the hardest thing to go through. Once we were in the PICU I was actually feeling some relief because they were able to sedate him and he was finally able to sleep and look a little more comfortable. He was put on oxygen called BIPAP, which is one step away from having to have a breathing tube put in, and he was on 60% oxygen (the air we breathe is 21% oxygen, so he was receiving
3 times that). His RSV had escalated so quickly from just the day before and he was having a really hard time breathing, it was awful seeing him work so hard to do something as simple as breathing, but I was so glad that he was finally where he needed to be and that the nurses would be watching him closely 24/7. Since we had all just pulled an all nighter, Jesse and I decided that it was best if we went home and showered and took a little nap and spent some time with Walter before we headed back up to the hospital. Our one night stay in a hospital just minutes from our apartment had just turned into a hospital stay estimated at 5 to 10 days clear down in Salt Lake.
