A hospital visit with Olivia

The girls have been sniffling a lot lately, Savannah had a bad cold this week and we had to do the nebulizer on her a few times.  The other 2 got the sniffles after her around Thursday or Friday.  On Saturday after Olivia's nap we noticed that she was breathing faster and heavier than normal.  We were headed to my parents to pick up Savannah who had stayed the night at Nana's so we went on down, but really thought she was getting worse.  By the time we got there we were contemplating taking her somewhere to get her oxygen checked, unfortunately the minute clinic had already closed so our only option was to hurry back for an urgent care or go to the ER.  My parents offered to keep Savannah and Emma so that we could take her if needed.  We called a few nurse friends for advice and a neighbor friend that works as a nurse in the ER was available to stop by and take a look/listen.  She told us that she had retractable breathing and probably needed to go. 

We took Olivia to the ER downtown and it was pretty busy in the waiting room.  We got there at 10:30 finally had an ER room by 1am but didn't get to a room upstairs until almost 5am.  It was a very long tiring night.  They did an x-ray to rule out pneumonia and then diagnosed her with a virus, probably RSV (she had this last year and was in the hospital for 4 days then).

They monitored her oxygen levels with a little red light thing around her toe and she hated it.  She kept pulling it off, not because it hurt but just because she did not want it there.  She was not a very good patient and cried every time someone came in the room, she did not want them touching her.  It was so sad, but honestly they did not even hurt her, she did not have an IV, they didn't draw blood, or even hook her up to oxygen.  But still she did not want them to touch her or listen to her lungs.  Her oxygen was just above the point where they would have needed to give her oxygen (91,92) when she slept, but when she was awake she worked much harder and could get up to 95,96.  After about 12 hours they let us go home since they decided she was not getting worse. 

We watched her closely that night, and she seemedto be getting a little better.  By Monday night we saw some real improvements and by Tuesday she was doing so much better.  The other girls are now over their colds so hopefully we will be healthy for a while.