Evan caught a cold last Friday and he had a runny nose and a cough - no fever. Saturday and Sunday were a little rocky, but once the Motrin kicked in, he was in pretty good spirits. Last night, however, we had a rough time. After going down at his normal time, he woke up a couple hours later. I went to check on him and he seemed ok. He didn't have a runny nose nor was he in a big drool puddle (which is usually the cause for him waking at night), so I told him to go back to sleep and he lied back down, like he usually does. But then he started moaning, "Momma, where are you?" and "Done ne-ne" (what we call 'sleep') over and over again.
Over an hour of checking on him and praying he'd fall asleep went by and I decided something was just not right. I called our doctor's on-call nurse and she responded really quickly. She asked how his breathing sounded and to lift his shirt and check the motion of his ribs and chest as he breathed. I told her it seemed a little more heavy and strained than normal. She had me count out his breaths and she determined his rate was a little higher than they would like. It was a rate of 48, and they recommend a child his age be seen in emergency care if it's over 40. She thought perhaps the coughing was waking him up and his struggle to get enough oxygen was keeping him up. So off we went to the emergency room for the first time.
We went to Swedish in Issaquah - so nice that we didn't have to drive to Overlake in Bellevue. We packed a cup of water, some snacks, a book and lots of toys in case we were in for a long night of waiting. We checked in at reception and the nurse came out to get us before the receptionist could even finish explaining the paperwork. It's a very nice facility and the staff was thorough. They had Evan take 2 chest X-rays. I walked over with him and once we got there, remembered I probably shouldn't be in the room when they took the X-ray, on account of Lil' Babe. So they paged Pops to join us and I had to wait outside. They got the 2 pictures on the first try, although Evan was not very pleased that I had to leave the room.
The doctor examined Evan and couldn't determine if the weird sounds he was hearing was due to Evan's stuffy nose or chest. The X-rays checked out, so they decided to give him some medication that he inhaled. He got a little mask in the shape of a dinosaur and was very good about breathing in the medicine. The medicine didn't make a ton of difference, so we were going to assume it was viral and would just have to monitor it. However, I had to remind the doctor that he mentioned Evan's left lymph node was enlarged, which totally slipped his mind. So he immediately prescribed some antibiotics that would help with the lymph node and perhaps even a bacterial sinus infection, should that be why Evan was so congested. They were able to give us the meds right there - no extra stop to pick up a prescription! And we were sent on our way.
We got home at 2 AM, just 2 hours later, and put Evan down. He was quite alert on the car ride home and wanted to read more stories, but once I started saying good night and laid him down in bed, he started rubbing his eyes and yawning. It was such a rough night for the little dude - and for us too! I was hoping he would sleep in til 10, but I got 7:45 instead. Hopefully he'll take a long nap today - and I will get to, too! The antibiotics seem to be working and hopefully he'll be over this pretty quickly! Cause I need a good night's sleep after all this excitement!!
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