It seems that my son might think that I need to have a bit more excitement in my life. That's the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for why he sent his Mama's heart into a flutter by deciding that he needed to take another ride in an ambulance .
The story goes like this: Wednesday night Monkey woke up screaming. Drew gave him Tylenol and everyone went back to sleep. In the morning, he was breathing hard, lethargic and coughing so we scheduled an early appointment with the doctor. When Drew got him to the office, Magoo suddenly began having an asthma-like attack where he was grunting and breathing so hard that his ribs were showing and his neck muscles and tendons were prominent. His O2 was at 87%. He gave everyone in the office quite a scare, so they called in the ambulance to take him to the ER.
My poor little monkey looked so sick when I met them at the hospital. His eyes were dull with dark circles under them and he didn't even fight the mask they put on his face. I watched as his stomach went up and down heaving with the effort to breathe. His breaths were shallow and far faster than normal. He was quickly given a series of treatments, some steroids, a chest X-ray and some other diagnostic tests. An hour later, he'd perked up and was back to his lady killing ways chatting up the doctors and nurses like they'd been friends forever. I didn't think it was possible to be happy about hearing his endless list of demands, but after seeing him barely able to speak it was a blessing to be able to get him his juice, a movie, some cars stickers, Lightening McQueen, Scruffy, his blanket, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Please note though that this blissful approach to meeting his every desire has since passed. Didn't take long at all.
All of his tests came back negative--no pneumonia, no swine flu, no RSV, no strep. We were left with no definitive explanation for what brought on the attack. It might have been allergies, a viral infection or it might be asthma. Frustrating to not know the answer, but what can you do?
On Friday, I took him back to the office for his follow up visit. All of the nurses, techs and even the doctor that saw him the day before came into the exam room to say how happy they were to see him doing so well. The doctor even had to lift up his shirt to confirm for herself that he was breathing better. It was quite touching to see their concern.
He still is breathing a little hard and his energy isn't quite up to par, but he's on the mend. We'll continue his Albuterol and steroid treatments and hope to never encounter this breathing difficulty again. We've been lucky this past year with Chase since this is the first time he's been really sick since last winter. That's not an open invitation though, so Mr. Swine, you can continue to stay away. Because despite Chase's stated desire to return to the "Hopspital", my heart has had enough of a thrill thank you anyway.
Glad to know he's doing better!
ReplyDelete