Harrie has had a cold for a few days but we expect that of a daycare full-timer. What we didn't expect was for her to spend monday night in hospital after being sent home from daycare.
Monday morning and she was still snotty and had a cough but no temperature and she didn't seem any worse than she had on Friday. So I dropped her and AJ at daycare and went to work. I was back at daycare picking HM up at about 12:30 and then after she'd had a nap I took her to the doc.
Her breathing was laboured and running about twice as quickly as it should be. Her little stomach was working hard as was that little dip where the neck meets the top of the chest. With minimal humming and ahing the doc suggested taking her to emergency to let them check her out. It made sense as the alternative was head home - further away from the hospital - and then possibly have to go there if things got worse.
I gave Sal a call and headed to Royal North Shore's paediatric emergency. She was given the once over with little waiting time. Sal turned up - fortunately for us the in-laws are staying and they picked up AJ. The high breathing rate and lowish oxygen saturation meant she was given ventolin, prednisone and put on oxygen. They also gave her a chest x-ray - I wish I'd got a picture of the huge grin on her face as she sat there with Sal, lead-smocked, holding her arms out of the way.
It was then a matter of waiting to see how she fared. Harrie would be staying at least one night for observation so Sal took the car and headed back home to get some stuff for me; with no sick leave available to Sal and because I can sleep pretty much anywhere it was a no-brainer that I would stay with HM.
Sal bought back Thai food a change of clothes. The change of clothes was patch-pocket shorts and a check shirt which could exactly replace the patch-pocket shorts and check shirt I was wearing. I had been thinking a t-shirt and a jumper might arrive, possibly even a change of undies.
Sal then left again while I waited around, watched some disturbing footage of torture in Syria and then some surprisingly impressive moments from senator Bill Shorten on Q&A. He seems to know his shit. Our room up on level 5 was then ready, we relocated and got our heads down for the night, me on a chair-bed-thing and Harrie with a tube up her nose and a clip on her foot.
She woke up a few times in the night but did OK. Sal came back in the morning for a couple of hours giving me the opportunity to pick up some supplies and get some fresh air. Then I pitched in for as-long-as-it-would take.
Harrie had progressively less oxygen as the day wore on and then no ventolin. By early afternoon the breathing was back to near enough normal and her O2 saturation likewise. Another doctor checked her out and said we could check out, which was nice. Great for her and fortunate for me as I'd run out three mobile phone batteries by browsing news sites. I had been offered a newspaper, but as it was the Telegraph (not really a newspaper, more a comic) I had declined. I know what daytime TV is like, so my only TV time was to switch it off when Sal left.
Although the test for Bronchiolitis - tube up the nose thing - had come back negative the doctors all seemed to think that was the most likely culprit. Inflamed airways on the bronchioles leading to difficulty breathing, or respiratory distress. With some ventolin to takeaway in case the wheezing started again we left for home at about 4, roughly 24hours after we'd got to the hospital.
Last night HappyBurp had a reasonable sleep and her breathing rate has remained normal, around 36 per minute and down from the 18 in 15 seconds the doctor had counted. She'd taken it all in her stride. I had remained relatively calm throughout and Sal had been fret-lite but fret nonetheless. My biggest challenge came early on in the piece with trying to stop her ripping the tube from under her nose and then later trying to convince her that toys were better to play with than tubes and wires.
So there you have it. Recorded for posterity while HM sleeps and I should be doing likewise or cleaning walls or working or some such. Back to work tomorrow when Sal works form home and I hand over the baby baton. Might get to hang with my little lady on Friday, let's see how the week pans out. For now, other than having a cold, she is pretty much her normal self.
Quite a dry post this one, sorry about that.
1 comment:
Thank goodness you guys are all fine!
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