It's Not Always Sunny...

I just wanted to write a post to let all of you know what our little family has gone through in just one short week. Kylie started getting sick, we thought it was a cold, on Saturday night. She was a little lethargic, and coughing but nothing we really thought was alarming. She was still coughing on Sunday so I made her a doctor's appointment for Monday. We went to the doctor and he said that she had Bronciolitis, just like a million other kids in our town, so he prescribed her Zythromax (antibiotic) and we were on our way. Things were ok for a while then that night Kylie's fever went very high (well at least too high for me to be comfortable with, running around the 102 degree mark) and it was persistant so early Tuesday morning, after taking the temperature for the hundredth time we made our first trip to the Emergency Room. Turns out she had an infection in her left ear, we were told to keep taking the Zythromax and we were sent home.
The fever persisted, and so did I, we made our second appointment to see our Doctor. We went in and he said that the Zythromax was doing nothing, and prescribed her Augmentin, a much stronger antibiotic. So we were on our way again.
I stayed home with our girl on Wednesday, and she seemed to be perking up. (A huge sigh of relief)
In order for her not to have to go to daycare while sick, My mom took a day off from teaching and came over on Thursday to watch Kylie so I could go back to work. We thought things were ok. I checked in on my lunch break and mom said she was coughing up a storm, so for the third time I called our doctor to see if there was something we could do to fight the cough. We made an appointment for 4:20 and called it good.
Come 3:00 my mom was on the phone saying Kylie was still coughing and could not catch her breath, she did not look good at all, so we ran to the Emergency Room. Her oxygen levels were very low because she could not stop coughing and take a full breath, so they set her up on oxygen and did some nebulizers and steriod treatment to clear the airways. They also did a swab for RSV (Respitory Syncytial Virus : here is a website http://children.webmd.com/tc/respiratory-syncytial-virus-rsv-infection-topic-overview )
We also had a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. (all clear on that front)
Kylie was still taking oxygen and nebulizers through this whole ordeal. The doctor on call wanted to admit us for overnight observations, but there were no rooms available in the hospital at that time, so our options became going to Powell, Billings, or home with Nurse Karen in tow.
Luckily for us they were discharging another baby, so a room came available. We just had to wait for them to clean it. While we were waiting, Kylie's test results came back positive for RSV. All the while, she was still on oxygen.

We left the ER and headed for the 3rd floor of the hospital, where the oxygen tent was already set up. It's basically a rolling bed with an enclosed plastic canopy and a machine on one end that pumps mist and oxygen into the canopy. I tried to stay in the tent with her, but was unable to handle the humidity, so I took a sideline seat to the coughing, crying baby in the tent (it was miserable). We survived the night with little to no sleep. In the morning we were greeted with good news. Our nurse for the day would be Grandma Karen and Kylie was doing much better. She spent most of the morning outside of her plastic prison and her oxygen levels were staying up. Our doctor came in and told us that if she still looked good in the afternoon, she'd be released from the hospital. At about 12:50 we were released with a home nebulizer in tow. We are now in our home doing breathing treatments twice a day for the next week. Kylie's hanging in there and hopefully will stay on the road to recovery. Nobody said parenting was easy.