The dinner was great. Good food and good friends was just the thing we needed to end our two days of horror. Emma Kate told everyone how she "hut her singer." She and Mary McKinnon hung out eating cheese dip and coloring. We laughed a lot at oldie-but-goodie stories and we just had a good time.
Everything seemed great.
That night, we got home and Emma Kate didn't want to go to bed. She had gotten so worked up over her finger, and then over dinner with Mary McKinnon that she was too excited to fall asleep in her bed. So, Emma Kate and I headed to our bed to try and watch some T.V and hopefully pass out peacefully. Emma Kate had a little cough and had told Mike that her "mouth was making noise," which is what she says when she is wheezing, so I gave her a nebulizer treatment about 8:30. Finally, she fell asleep around 9:00.
As I lay in the bed next to her, I noticed that she was coughing more and more as the night progressed. After two hours, I realized that she was coughing so much that she was gagging at the end of every coughing fit. I counted the time inbetween coughing fits. It was on 6 seconds.
We were getting a little worried, but I hesitated to call mom, since it was midnight and she has to get up for work at 4:30a.m. Finally, I called UNC, who was at mom's. He told me he would wake her up.
TIME-OUT: For those of you who don't know, I called mom because she knows asthma. She has had it--well, her whole life. Emma Kate's fits were starting to sound like my mom's asthma attacks when I was little. When she was coughing to the point of gagging and my brothers and I would have to beat on her back to break up the stuff in her lungs. So, I wanted mom to help me determine if this was a full-blown asthma attack or just a little cough. I tend to under-estimate things because I am afraid I will over-exagerate. I need to just listen to my mommy instincts--they are usually right.
TIME-IN.
Mom could hear her coughing over the phone. I found some oral steroid leftover from a January attack and gave Emma Kate the prescribed dosage. Although she took the meds, she just gagged them right back up. Mom came over and we all decided it was time to call the after-hours number for our pediatrician.
When they called back, the nurse could hear Emma Kate in the background. She was still getting air, but the nurse thought it had been long enough for the steriod and albuterol to have kicked in. If she was still having trouble like that, the nurse advised that we go straight to the ER. At 12:30 a.m. Exactly 7.5 hours after we left the doctor's office having her finger fixed. On a Thursday night.
We bundled up for the cool night air and headed to EAMC. Luckily it wasn't too crowded and we got back pretty soon. But, by the time we saw the nurse practioner, the attack had pretty much subsided. Seems the steroid kicked in about the time we were in triage. Which was GOOD, but you know how the ER is, we have to do x-rays and tests to be sure.
EK was a trooper for the chest xray and she played on her hospital bed as if it was not 2 a.m.
I almost had it out with the nurse practioner who tried to tell me that she didn't have an asthma attack because she wasn't wheezing. It was WAY too late to go into what the ASTHMA specialist has taught me that Emma Kate's asthma manifests itself in coughing fits and not so much the wheezing. ANYWAY.
We got out of there about 3:30 a.m. Emma Kate slept with us didn't have any more problems. I stayed home with her Friday and she slept until 11:00 a.m!!!
So, that is it. That was our Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Luckily, our Saturday was a million times better. I will tell you all about it later, but here is a sneak peek.....
1 comment:
WOW. Bless her little heart.
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