Avery's Adventure: Avery got her weekends mixed up

I think she thought this weekend was mothers day(since she seems to like to spend holidays in the hospital) because she decided she wanted to get taken to the hospital in an ambulance and get admitted. On Friday she had an appointment scheduled with her pediatrician for a hospital follow up from last week and for a cough. She was doing well after getting discharged last Thursday from Fairview. She went to daycare on Monday, Tuesday and half a day Wednesday and when we picked up her on Wednesday, daycare said she was coughing the whole time. We kept her home on Thursday and debated on sending her to daycare on Friday. Friday morning she didn't seem to be feeling that great and was coughing still so Tim rearranged his plumbing jobs (his poor customers , thankfully they are understanding) and took her to her follow up appointment.

They took her pulse ox and it was in the low 80's so they decided to call the ambulance to take her to the ER downtown. I was in a meeting at work when Dr Love called and told me what was going on.. Definitely not the call you ever want to get, saying your daughter is having breathing problems and is being taken to the hospital by ambulance.

I went straight to main campus ER from work since I work close to downtown. When I walked in I heard someone's alarms going off and I thought to myself, please don't be Avery's room please don't be Avery's room and low and behold, it was Avery's room. Itwas very scary because there were about 10 people in her room trying to get her stabilized and it was pretty chaotic. Definitely not what I was expecting to walk into. When I got there Tim was holding onto Avery's arms and trying to keep them away from everyone poking her. I then took over to give Tim a break. Right after I started holding onto Avery, Tim started crying. It is definitely hard not to cry when she is staring up at you while you are holding her down while everyone is poking her and working on her. I didn't cry while I was holding her because I didn't want Avery to see my cry. I think it would have made her more scared. The doctor told me they couldn't get an IV started and they might have to do an IV through her bone. They reassured me that the bone didn't have nerves, etc so it wouldn't hurt that much. I know they were trying to calm me down because how can drilling through bone not hurt? They had another doctor come in and try to get an IV started which failed. All in all they tried 8 different times in various places and still couldn't started one. They decided to give her a break for a second since her heart rate was really high. We tried giving her some pedialyte by bottle along with pushing some through her gtube. She seemed to perk up after that. She ended up stabilizing and they never did end up needing an IV. Thankfully they didn't do the one through her bone.

She was transported up to our home away from home, M33(children's hospital). When she got up there she didn't even need oxygen. She still wasn't feeling good but she looked much better than 20 minutes before.

She had a cough, congestion and green goop in her eyes. They said the eye discharge is most likely from the viral infection and not pink eye since her eyes weren't red at all. They hooked her up to a pulse ox machine and she was maintaining herself without needing any oxygen. They suspected a respiratory virus again (or it was still from last week) so the plan was to observe her, give her oxygen if needed and make sure she was eating and drinking.

Spending the night there was rough. She woke up about 4 times, sometimes wanting to eat and sometimes due to coughing. In the morning, she was still having a very moist cough but they said she seemed well enough to go home considering she never ended up needing any oxygen assistance while on the floor. She got discharged around 1:30pm on Saturday.

Last night was rough again and she woke up 4 times. Tim and I are completely exhausted because we are still trying to play catch up from last week. She seems to be feeling pretty well except her cough sounds horrible and she is very congested.

We have decided to pull Avery out of daycare yet again for about a month to a month and a half and see how it goes. All of us need a break and we can't keep going to the hospital every week. She did fine in daycare last summer(she started in June)except for a few times she had a bad cough which required no ER trips or hospital stays. We are still working on arrangements for various members of Tim's family to come watch her here at home for a short term solution but we need to come up with a long term solution. If she can't go to daycare in the summer, we are going to have to find a different solution.

It would make sense for me to be at home with her because Tim could make a lot more money than I can but the only reason I am still working and not staying at home with her is because of the health insurance. We get such great benefits with the clinic and we can't give that up right now because of all of Avery's issues. I suggested me possibly quitting my current job and getting a part time job with the Cleveland clinic and working a few days a week so we could keep our health insurance and Tim would have two definite days he could work while I would be home with her a few days.

We talked about possibly having an in home sitter or maybe someone who watches only one other baby.

We also talked about Tim going back to working nights and weekends. I think this is going to be a last resort because 1. We would never see each other and 2. None of us would ever get a break.

I know even if Avery ends up doing ok in daycare in the summer we are probably going to have to pull her out again next winter so that is something else to think about.

See all that stuff at the bottom of the bed. That's all the stuff they used to try to get an IV in me.