RSV

On of Jake and I's biggest concerns about having a December baby was the increased chance of the baby getting RSV. Well....our nightmare came true!!! February 24th McKinlee came down with a cough and some congestion. The cold stuck around throughout the weekend. I kept asking myself "how sick is she?" "Does she need to go see the doctor?" I finally decided on Sunday night that I thought she was fine....she was still smiling and happy. Then I started to ask myself the same questions again....and so I decided to look up RSV online and see what I needed to look for. One of the things it talked about was her sucking in at her ribs when she would breathe. Well....I watched and she would do that here and there but not consistently so I decided she was probably fine. The next day I continued to ask myself the same questions and talked to Jake, my Mom, etc. about it and finally I decided to call and ask the nurse what things I needed to look for. She said the same things I had seen online, but said the biggest thing was to look for a fever. Well....she didn't have a fever so I decided she was OK. Well....surprise surprise....I still couldn't leave it alone, so I decided to call the doctor and make an appointment and let the doctor decide how sick she was.

Our appointment was with the nurse practitioner (I hate that because I feel like she always ends up having to grab the doctor anyway) at 2:40. When we got there the nurse checked her out and told me that she would send the nurse practitioner in and then she would probably be back to do a breathing treatment with McKinlee. After that the Nurse practitioner came in and she checked her out and checked her out. She said that her lungs sounded a little raspy and then wanted to check her oxygen saturation. She wasn't overly happy with the number she got (91% oxygen saturation) so she decided to try and Albuterol treatment. Well...the number was worse after the treatment and she felt like she was having a hard time coming up with a number she was happy so she finally went and grabbed Dr. Strizitch to come and see what he thought. Well he checked her for about 5 minutes and he couldn't get a number over 85 so he apologized and apologized and ended up saying that he just couldn't send us home. We needed to go to be admitted to the hospital (luckily their office is in the hospital).

The nurse took us strait to admitting and we were a direct admit so we went strait upstairs and to our room. We were in room 4024 and were our doctor's office's second RSV admit that day. When we got into our room that is when we started to be attacked.....they put a sign on our door saying you could not come in without wearing a gown, mask, gloves etc. then they started putting monitors on McKinlee, taking blood, weighing her, etc. It was pretty crazy!!!

Monday, February 27th

Here she is in her hospital gown after they drew blood etc. It was soooo sad because the first Phlebotomist was too gun shy and didn't want to hurt her so she didn't get quite enough blood when she had to take blood from her heel.....sadly this meant that another Phlebotomist had to come up and do it AGAIN!!!
Another thing they did was take this little tiny tube that was about 6+ inches long and stick it down her nose about 4 inches and suction her out. It was really gross!!!

She was sooooo sad!!! They sent out tests for Influenza, RSV, and we were waiting on a chest X-Ray at this point.

Tuesday, February 28

Around 4am the nurse came in and told me that her Influenza test came back negative and her chest X-Ray looked fine. So I was very happy to hear that!!!

This is a pic of McKinlee in the "crib" (I think it looks more like a cage for animals in the zoo) they provided for her.

The next morning when McKinlee's doctor came in she went through the test results with me and told me that because of the X-ray they knew she had a viral pneumonia and she was negative for Influenza and was still waiting on the RSV test because that gets sent off to the state lab....

I was VERY confused at this point and told her that the nurse had told me that her X-ray was fine....so....which is it...and she told me that it was fine in the sense that there wasn't any big black areas in the X-Ray that showed them that there was a bacterial pneumonia it was hazy though so it was a viral pneumonia. Who knew there were all these different things.

Anyhow....she told me doctor Strizitch would be in later to check on her again.

She looked miserable!!!

After a while the nurse came in and told us that her RSV test was positive. I knew that was going to happen, but I still felt HORRIBLE for her!!!

They continued to come in several times a day and suctioned her nose and throat out. Other than that the only thing they did was watch her oxygen saturation in her blood.

Tuesday night in the middle of the night after she got done eating she got herself coughing and sneezing and finally threw up. So then the nurse came in and we got her changed and me changed and suctioned her out and back to bed. The nice thing about the hospital is that you have someone right there helping you in the middle of the night to get things done quickly and efficiently .

Wednesday, February 29

McKinlee was starting to look and act a LOT more like herself. She was smiling more again and kicking around and didn't look sooooo exhausted.

The doctor agreed and said we would watch her throughout the day and start turning down her oxygen and see how she did. Maybe we would be able to go home.

Well....McKinlee did really well!! Finally around 5:00 Dr. Danielson came in and said she was looking good. They wanted her to take one more nap and make sure she didn't drop below 88% while asleep and if she could do that she could go home. I struggled with this just because it is nice KNOWING that she was OK whereas if I go home I have to just watch and hope my instincts will kick in and tell me if I need to take her back in.

Well...she did really well....while asleep she hovered around 91% and when she was awake she was around 96%-99% which was really good!!! So around 6:00pm we decided that yes we would go home.

Grandma Yearsley came Tuesday night and came down to see McKinlee and help me get our things together and take her home. When she came in earlier in the day she had to wear the gown, gloves etc. but when she came down again they asked her to do the same thing, but I told her that was a joke since we were taking her home and no one there would be wearing a gown etc. around her. So here is a pic of McKinlee just an hour before taking her home.

I look terrible here, but OH WELL!!! McKinlee and I after being in the hospital since Monday. (My hair isn't done, I have no make up on and I hadn't really slept by this point, but I am one happy Mama to be taking my baby home!!!

I sat her up in the bed....she looks sooooo small, but she isn't hooked up to anything any more.

All the monitors are turned off and going home is just minutes away.

We finally left the hospital around 7:45pm (the discharge nurse said, "this is a strange time for someone to be discharged!!!") and headed for home.

When we got home Jake was changing every one's bedding, vacuuming the floor, he had things set up for me to clean the bathrooms etc. We want this RSV to go away as quickly as possible!!!

Good job McKinlee!!! Way to get your oxygen levels up!!!

What a strong little baby girl!!!

We are soooo happy to have her home!!!