137, 8 & 9/365 – Breathless

I’ve re-written this post about 53 times in my head and it always ends up in a rambling mess with trails of the story running off everywhere and me not being able to tie them all in at the end so I’m going to give you the short version instead!

I haven’t blogged for 3 days because we’ve been in hospital on the Children’s Ward.  The boy woke up wheezing and struggling to breathe on Sunday morning so I sent him into A&E with the husband (at about 7am).  I followed them in an hour later, when the girl had woken up and I’d organised someone to look after her (thank you so much LNFATR for once more stepping into the breach), half expecting to see them sitting around ready to go home.  Not so.  They were in a cubicle with the boy asleep on the husbands lap and a nebuliser running.  It turned out that was the 3rd one he’d had and they weren’t lasting very long (about 10 minutes at the most).  After the 4th nebuliser they decided to admit him onto the ward.  We went up and got settled in and they decided to try and give him a nebuliser every hour (it had been half hourly before) but add in another type of nebuliser (every 6 hours) and a dose of oral steroids to try and get his airways to relax and open up.

It soon became obvious that we weren’t going anywhere fast so the husband went and got me some lunch (they only provide for the children, not the parents that have to stay with them – thank goodness we were both there).  The plan was for the husband to go and get the girl, go home and have some lunch.  We then got stuck in one of those hospital cycles where you’re always waiting for the next thing to happen.  We had a review, then we had to wait for another nebuliser and another review because if he didn’t improve he was going to be prepped for a drip so they could pump more drugs in, I forget which ones.  Then at the next review they said wait until the next one.

At this point, I needed to rescue LNFATR as she was going away this week and had things that she needed to get done that day so I went and got the girl and brought her into hospital (she was fairly desperate to see her boys by then) and we tried to see if anyone else could have her for a couple of hours.  Note to self, don’t go to hopsital on a Sunday – people are always busy then!  It worked out ok because we all stayed there as a family for a few hours and then the girl and husband (who was starving by then) went off to have some tea and gather up night time things for me and the boy to stay over.  By then he was being nebulised every 2 hours (looking back, it’s easy to see now but was hard to see at the time that he was turning a corner).  Tea in the hospital was frankly vile so I’m glad I didn’t have any.  The boy got an adult sized portion of meat pie (I use the word meat loosely), lumpy mashed potato and overcooked vegetables.  Fortunately we always travel with plenty of mostly healthy snacks (cereal bars, fruit, dried fruit etc) so he didn’t go hungry.

The husband and the girl came back in with more supplies for me and the boy and then went home again.  The boy and I settled in for the long haul.  I hate being in hospitals overnight.  We started sharing a room with 2 others but the boy was reacting so angrily to the nebulisers that we soon got moved to our own room (well done, the boy!) for the sake of the other two who were trying to get some sleep!  We’d moved onto 3 hourly nebulisers which was fairly grim.  Salbutomol makes the heart beat faster and generally gees up the whole body so after each nebuliser the boy would be up for a couple of hours.  He’d just doze off and get about half an hours sleep and the we’d have to start again.  Fortunately at the 3am one he was so tired that he didn’t wake up for it.

By 6am on Monday morning he’d had enough sleep (apparently) and was obviously up for the day.  We had breakfast and waited for the husband who was coming in when he’d dropped the girl at nursery.  Then we all got to sit around and wait for the doctors to come and see us which finally happened at about 11am.  They ordered an inhaler (instead of a nebuliser! Progress) as he’d not been nebulised since 6am, a good 5 hours previously.  We’d been offered one at 9 but I wanted to wait and see a doctor when he hadn’t just been nebulised so they could see what progress he’d made.  By the time we’d been seen we’d run out of parking again so instead of feeding the meter I legged it home to have  a shower, some lunch and pick the girl up from nursery.  While I was gone the husband was shown how to give the boy the inhaler with a spacer.

The girl and I pottered about the house for a while doing housewifely things like peeling potatoes for tea and wiping surfaces (in an emergency always make sure your surfaces are clean).  Then we went back to the hospital.  Again.  I hadn’t realised until I started typing this exactly how much to-ing and fro-ing there was.

We all saw the asthma specialist at 3.30pm and then I was given an inhaler so I could have a go while there was someone qualified to make sure I got it right.  Finally they wrote up the boy’s discharge papers, gave me 3 A4 sheets all about how and when to use the inhaler and how to wean the boy off the massive doses of salbutomol he’s been having and we were off home by about 5 o’clock.

Yesterday I spent catching up with the girl, she was genuinely worried for the boy I think and also a little bit lacking in attention, and sleeping!  This morning I took them both out to try and get things feeling a bit normal and now it’s nearly 3 o’clock and once again I’m sitting here thinking “where does the time go?”.

We have to wean the boy off the salbutomol over the next 4 days (it takes 6 in total and we’ve had 2 already) by reducing the number of puffs we give him starting with 6 puffs every 4 hours, reducing by 2 puffs every 2 days (today we are giving 4 puffs every four hours and the day after tomorrow it will be 2 puffs every 4 hours) until the last day when we also reduce the frequency to every 6 hours.  We’ll be doing those puffs overnight as well so sleep will be at a premium for the next few days.  It’s worth doing though, 1 in 6 children goes back into hospital almost immediately after an episode like this and stopping the drugs gradually will hopefully reduce this risk.

I’ve just previewed this post – aren’t you glad I gave you the short version!

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