babyblog

RSV

Last weekend Tabitha started to get poorly. She had a strange hacking cough and she had a fever. We were up in Hereford visiting with G's family and she was really miserable and upset the whole time. I talked about taking her to a GP there but decided to see how she got on. We got back to mums on Sunday and she started to get worse, her breathing was extremely rapid.

We called mums out of hours GP and a nurse had me look at her chest while on the phone and we determined it was heaving and between the ribs sucking inwards. This was 11.15pm. At 11.25pm the ambulance that the nurse had called arrived and took us to the hospital.

G and I were very nervous about going to a British hospital after reading all about MRSA and the like and were obsessively and ridiculously washing with alcohol every 5 minutes.

The Pediatric ER was fantastic. They admitted us and took us to an exam room where the nurse confirmed that the chest heaving (known as 'recession') was alarming. She gave us oxygen and brought a pediatrician immediately in. He gave Tabby a nebulizer to open the airways. She wasn't too bad at this point.

They did an xray and this apparently showed something going on in the lungs. They decided to admit her. They sent us up to an 'acute admissions' ward where we were seen by a more senior pediatrician who told us he suspected RSV and Bronchiolitis as a complication and that he would be admitting her to a ward.

At this time, 4am, we were taken to a ward and put in a bed right beside the nurses station amongst other beds - very noisy and bright. Tabby, not the worlds best sleeper, began to get very upset and distressed. She started to cry, a droning very distressing noise, and wouldn't stop. This went on for several hours. Nurses ignored us. Nobody came to check her. Eventually someone from the billing department arrived (typical) because we're no longer UK residents. We agreed we'd be paying for the privilege and I asked for a private room. She said probably not. Tabby got worse. We took her to a quiet parent-only room to get her away from the racket but it didn't help. By this point she'd been awake pretty much for 3 days straight.

Finally a nurse realised she wasn't doing too well and a DR arrived. He took one look at her and prescribed oxygen and moved her into a side room - somewhere she should have been anyway because RSV is highly contagious. He said she needed to rest, she was completely exhausted, and this was not helping matters when she was already struggling to breathe. The 'recession' was getting worse. He sedated her - and she remained so for the most part for the next couple of days.

She slept for a while but got somewhat worse.....and then they moved us to another ward because we needed to be nearer to the nurses and DR's. We got a private room thankfully, right by the nurse station where she could be closely monitored. Still given oxygen via a mask at this point.

The days begin to blur here and I think alot of this happened over a short period of time, but in my memory it took place over days and days.... at some point they decided to put a feeding tube down her nose because she was too tired to feed from me properly and getting dehydrated. They didn't want her to work any harder. I was then instructed to pump. She continued to decline a little and they changed from the oxygen mask to nasal prongs to deliver more oxygen.

Things got worse.

On Tuesday night her oxygen still wasn't keeping up and they stopped the feeds and inserted an IV with a fluids drip. She got worse again. The DR ordered an XRAY and discovered that her right lung was partially collapsed. She was immediately given antibiotics incase further infection was stuck in the collapsed lung. She continued to get worse. The DR announced that she was warning the ICU that we were on the way. Meanwhile they put her into a 'head box' - a glass box into which was pumped large amounts of oxygen and steam - a horrific sauna of a thing. It enabled her oxygen to go up slightly but then she started to decline again.

Whenever she fell asleep her she 'de-satted' - her stats dropping and oxygen not being pumped around her body sufficiently. Her body was becoming exhausted from the effort it was making to breathe. The ICU was put on alert again. G and I discovered at 4am that when it dropped if we nudged her, shouted to her, attempted to wake her, her levels would rise above danger-zone. We sat vigil at the bed side doing this. At 7am dad arrived from London having cancelled his trip to the US. Having him with us has helped alot, emotionally and logistically meaning nobody gets left alone and scared.

He joined us in shouting at her to pull through and tell her to stay with us. It was truly the most terrifying thing imaginable. We really felt that we were losing her. Those hours were endless and horrific.

Things stayed much the same all day Wednesday until around 5pm when she suddenly woke up for the first time since Sunday and looked around inside the box. She explored it with her hands. Her oxygen levels went right up to 100% for the first time. This went on for about 30 minutes then she got distressed. Crying, flailing, hitting against he box, heart rate up, oxygen levels lowering. I begged her to be allowed out of the box, insisting it was upsetting her. Nobody else agreed that she should come out. This went on for a while, I was really worried she'd exhaust herself further and felt helpless as she was in this box and we could not do anything for her.

Finally a DR was called and she agreed if getting her out, her O2 stayed up, she could come out of the box and back on the mask. YAY. We really had turned a corner. She came out into our arms and her levels stayed up. She looked at us. She cried. She came back to us, no longer a limp little thing without a clue what was going on.

Yesterday (Thursday) she stayed on the nasal prongs and we started tube feeds again through her nasal tube. She has tolerated them well and her oxygen has stayed up.

As of today - Friday her feeds have been increased and her IV fluids decreased. Her oxygen slightly decreased too. Yay.

Despite the hiccup in the first ward, we've had phenomenal care here. Could not have been better.

I don't know when we'll get home - she may be let out of hospital next week earlyish if she improves at the rate she currently is. We've cancelled our flights home which were supposed to be yesterday. We're rescheduled for next week but will probably have to re-reschedule again as lowered oxygen and pressure in the plane is no good for someone with respiratory distress.

Meanwhile Mum has the boys and thank goodness for her. How could we have coped if this happened in the US? They are doing brilliantly with her and she's stepped up to the plate marvellously coping with them, despite it being a full on insta-grandma shock to the system! She is also doing our laundry endlessly and making sure we have clean underwear and clothes at the hospital. Auntie Kay and Ken are helping out too. Such a massive thing for us to be able to know they're being looked after so well..... we miss them terribly and they miss us, but they're doing fine...... we are tryign to pop back individually every so often to see them for an hour as long as Tab is stable.

I don't know if there's anything I've missed - probably - and I've underplayed how fucking terrifying this whole ordeal has been. RSV is the most horrible awful virus and Tabby has given us a massive scare. We genuinely thought we might lose her... it was so bloody awful. She's not out of the woods yet, but she's back with us, thank goodness.

I have photo's. I will post them. But I'm sitting in the corridoor outside the ward right now beside a coke machine, sneaking onto the WIFI belonging to the childrens hospital school room. It's heavily restricted so I can't do much.

Posted by katie at January 11, 2008 07:55 AM