Pneumonia

2 weeks ago Jason and I had a little cold.

Last week Ellie stayed home all week with a cold.  She was needing 3 liters of oxygen all week and I really coiuldn't get her lower.  Usually it seems like she gets better or worse.

So on Friday I took her to the pediatrician.  (She had started the cold on the previous Sat).  He couldn't tell if she had pnemonia from listening to her so he wanted to do blood and chest x-ray.  She was also really bloated and we had been having a hard time getting her to poop that week.  So he ordered an abdominal x-ray and stool cultures.  Since we have standing orders for urine...I took a sample in just "because".

The x-ray showed the beginning of pnemonia so we had to take her to Primary's Friday night.  Since we had all of those tests already done it made the ER visit a lot shorter.

They admitted her.  Jason had to stay with her since I needed to stay home and nurse the new baby and didn't want the baby getting the hospital germs.  It was the first time Jason has taken her to the ER without me or stayed more than 1 night in a row.  And the first time I didn't go at all for her whole hospitalization.  It was hard to release control.  But Jason did great!  Ellie survived and everything!!!!

They gave her a few doses of IV antibiotics and then decided to stop.  They said if it was bacterial then she would get worse and they could put her back on more antibiotics.  But if it was viral antibiotics wouldn't help anyway.

All day Sunday she was down below 1 liter of oxygen (so that was better than the 3 liters she had been at).  So they released her Sunday night.

Today (Monday) she is still needing oxygen.  Less than 1 liter while awake.  3 liters while asleep.  She is doing good.  But we haven't been able to get her off oxygen so we can't send her back to school.  She is also coughing up a bunch of junk.  Not that she has a cough, the junk in her lungs is making her cough.  So we are suctioning out a bunch of stuff.

She does have a fever today...so I am hoping that is not a sign that she is getting worse.  But her oxygen needs have not increased and that will be the big marker.