Keys to Survival

Did you know that there are a few key elements we need to survive??!!  Oxygen, Food and Water (and pooping).  I guess Lucas wanted a little refresher course because he has to do all of these before leaving the hospital.   

1.  Yesterday they took out the IV and now he's on his own to drink enough fluids.  He's struggling with this a bit, but was so excited to finally get the IV out that he promised he would drink lots.  Water: Check

2.  Saturday evening he finally pooped.  Yeah!!  (He's going to be so thrilled I mentioned this on the blog!)  He's been going pretty regularly since.  Poop: Check

3.  He had little appetite when we first arrived and had hardly eaten anything the previous couple of days.  That's improved quite a bit!  He loves their hamburgers so that and cereal are about the only thing I can get him to, eat here (Although after about 4 hamburgers he's says he can't eat another!).  Food: Check

Side note:  My appetite would never increase if I was depending on this hospital's food...yuck!  But seriously, what is it that stinks so bad about the little serving/warming plates that they bring.  They smell the same in every hospital and they REEK!  If I ever decide to invent something it's going to be non stinky serving plates for hospitals.

4.  IN goes the good air, OUT goes the bad air!  (Did anyone else play that game when they were little???)  This has been his biggest struggle.  He does good and then it'll drop again.  Today he's been without oxygen most of the time and it's stayed in the 88-90 range.  He had a nap today and they had to put the oxygen back on because he kept dropping between 84-86.  Tonight though he's been staying the 90's awake.  I think we might be headed somewhere in the right direction.

This morning he woke up with a really bad headache and threw up twice.  Part because of the headache and part because of coughing.  They ordered another chest x-ray which just showed signs of Asthma.  They've decided to treat the asthma pretty aggressively with steroids, albuterol every 4 hrs, and flovent.  They gave him an oral steroid, even though I told him he throws them back up.  Yup... 30 seconds later up came all his breakfast.  After that he had to have the shot in his arm.  He wasn't to excited, but whatever works!

So here's the skinny on what he had.  The viral study came back positive for Viral Pneumonia, the Human Metapneumovirus to be exact.  (Just found this out today)  Apparently it's been going around and most likely it's what all my children had.  He just had it a lot worse and it triggered his asthma.  So what about the x-ray that showed the bacterial pneumonia??  Well, he was given heavy doses of antibiotics... Amoxicillan & Zithromax to be on the safe side.  But, it could have also been a partially collapsed lung.  According to the doc, they look similar on x-ray.  Now that the viral test was positive, they stopped the antibiotics and are focusing on the Asthma.  Make sense??  Well it's taken me a while to wrap my brain around all the back and forth diagnosis's.

Here there always making him cough and telling how it's such a good thing.  Guess I'll have to be more patient when my children have coughs and stop telling them to "STOP COUGHING"!!  But it's so annoying!! :)

So he's sitting at 95-96 O2 and coughing less.  Maybe tomorrow...