Pneumonia is not my friend

We're writing from our lovely room at the Children's Hospital where Miss Beanie is duking it out with pneumonia.

Yes, it sucks.  Her first real immune sickness occurred a couple of months ago, so we've had the impression that she has a good little immune system.  But we knew that she would be at increased risk for pneumonia in general since she had a severe bout of aspiration pneumonia last year after her tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy.

We were just hoping to avoid it.

But no dice.

She's been sick since Saturday, but had started to get worse on Wednesday.  Then yesterday she was very weak, pale, listless and sleepy with a fever over 102 and some vomiting. Then I noticed her ribs retracting with each fast shallow breath.

I am definitely a bit of the over-reacting mama bear.  Nick, ever rational, doesn't always immediately jump to the conclusions that I do.  I agreed to wait the hour until he got home before heading out of the house.  But after he got home from work he agreed pretty quickly that we should head to the ER.  I already had our bags ready to go.

Her oxygen saturations were in the low 80s in triage, so some time was spent getting her on oxygen, getting in an IV with fluids and antibiotics and getting a X-ray.  Pneumonia and dehydration is the diagnosis.

Last night held very little sleep for us. Maybe 4 hours for Cora, a bit more for Nick on the cot, and less than an hour for me.  Her O2 levels kept dropping during her sleep, her lungs sounding more crackly, and her breathing getting shallow and labored again. Even though we're just on the pediatric floor, it felt more like ICU care since we had nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists in the room every few minutes all night long.  No wonder we didn't sleep.  And the rest of the time I was watching the monitors and watching her breathe, ever the worrier.

With a couple nebulizer treatments in the early morning, a CPAP treatment around 8am (which were so miserable for her last year) and continued oxygen and antibiotics, she seems to be improving.  For now we just have to wait and see how she does.  She has to be OK without oxygen and without fluids.  Her breathing is definitely the more serious thing to watch, but keeping her hydrated on her own seems a bit daunting.  We've been in the throes of some epic biting/partial weaning/finally deciding to use a cup once in a while, then refusing most everything while sick.  She's 2, she's stubborn and she's sick.  So we'll just see.

So she's got her to do list with a couple big items on it.   Keeping fingers crossed that she can keep getting better and start drinking enough.  Optimistically we could head home tomorrow but it's all up to Cora.

Come on, girlie!

Thank you for your kind thoughts and prayers.

Exhausted girlie getting a snooze on Daddy's chest.