Unexpected Adventure - The First Night

I want to record all the details before I forget. I'm sure one day Riley will want to know what happened...I don't think he'll remember much. Right now, I wonder how I could ever forget but then I know that in time it'll fade just like everything else.

A week ago yesterday, my boys went to preschool like they do every Monday and Wednesday. They had both been coughing on and off but were running no fever and had no signs of infection, so we just chalked it up to allergies and the ever-changing weather around here.

When I went to pick the boys up, Riley was in trouble for having refused to take a nap. He looked a little peaked, but I thought maybe it was from skipping a nap and knowing he was in trouble. He fell asleep in the car on the way home and I put him straight to bed when we got there.

Joey came home from work around 3:30 and Riley woke up from his nap drenched in sweat and crying. Both of those things are unusual, so Joey decided it would be best to take him over to Acute Kids as soon as they opened at 4:30. Acute Kids ran a strep test and a flu test - both came back negative. Clearly seeing that his breathing was labored they advised us to double up on his breathing treatments and prescribed Tamaflu as a preventative in case he had been exposed or was in the process of developing the flu.

We went to church and left Riley with my parents. Joey picked up the Tamaflu around 9 p.m. and went to my parent's house. He called concerned because he thought Riley didn't look good - for anyone that knows Joey, you'll know how bad Riley truly must have looked. Riley had been given three breathing treatments in three hours - and they're normally supposed to be three hours between each of them. I told them to count his respirations because the paperwork Acute Kids had sent home said to be concerned if he was taking more than 35 breaths per minute. He was way over this and when we contacted Acute Kids they recommended immediately taking him to the ER.

My parents met me at Children's Legacy while Joey came home to stay with Colt who was sleeping. I was concerned about Riley but truly thought the hospital would simply give him some heavier duty medicine and send us home. I called a couple people to pray and walked into the ER.

When I checked Riley in and explained his symptoms and the fact that we were there because Acute Kids had sent us, I expected them to immediately assess him. However it was probably close to half an hour before we saw the triage nurse. She was harried and kept excusing herself to deal with other patients and give instructions to another nurse about who to place in what room. By this point, Riley could barely stand on the scale and his O2 saturation (the level of oxygen getting into his blood) was registering 88%. It should be 99% or 100%. The assistant nurse didn't like that reading so she continued to mash his finger into the meter harder and harder until the reading began to go up. Even then she could only get the reading to go to 94%.

My mom had counted Riley's respirations at close to 50 per minute - she's a nurse so I think she knew what she was doing - but the triage nurse counted 42 per minute and the assistant nurse counted 38 per minute. They decided to go with the higher number for the chart.

Then they thanked us and said they would get us into a room as soon as one was available. Maybe naively I thought they meant that. However another hour and a half would pass before I went back to tell the triage nurse that Riley's respirations were now over 60 per minute. She did then get us into a room within 5 minutes, but it was another half an hour before he received any treatment.

Let me tell you that when five medical personnel all burst into an ER treating room, doing different things and then the doctor announces, "Wow, he doesn't look good at all." - it's likely to put at least a pinprick in your denial. When one of the medical team had the audacity to say, "Next time don't let it get this bad. Come in sooner." I did manage to point out that I had been in their waiting room since close to 10 p.m. and it was now 2 a.m. But I just wanted them to fix my son. I didn't want to argue about whose fault it was that he was so sick.

I do have to say that at this point, he was a very sick little boy. He was barely conscious. I thought he was just so tired that he was having a hard time staying awake but after seeing the way he responded after the medicine I knew that wasn't it. Once the medical team started working on Riley, they POURED medicine into him. They gave him 5 or 6 breathing treatments in a row with the strongest meds they had available. They administered an Epi Pen to get the swelling in his lungs down. They put in three IVs to get fluids and more anti-swelling medicine into him. It was a bit overwhelming.

Still I thought, once this all gets into his system he'll be fine and we'll go home. But his little heart started to race - up around 180 beats a minute for several hours. His respirations didn't decrease like they should have and as soon as they stopped the supplemental oxygen, his O2 sats plummetted again - even down into the 80s. The doctors started talking about sending him to ICU at Children's Downtown and I started to realize my assumptions about the situation had all been wrong.

I made a few phone calls, arranged for a friend to come to the house so Joey could meet us, and an ambulance picked Riley up and headed to the ICU at Children's Downtown . . .