Saturday Night Fever

Literally. When a glassy-eyed child falls asleep in his dinner plate something’s up and that something is generally not good.

Max had started with one of his slight coughs earlier in the week which usually signals that the best is yet to come, and come it did with a fury. We spent Saturday evening setting up clinic. Each piece of medical equipment came rolling out one by one. We started with the pulse oximeter which indicated that Max’s heart rate was way up, signaling the arrival of a high temp. At the same time his “sats” were really low (this means that Max’s blood was not ‘saturated’ sufficiently with oxygen - although he was breathing hard he was not getting enough oxygen into his blood) so out rolled the oxygen tank and the nebulizer for breathing treatments. Kids with heart defects can quickly wear themselves out when they struggle to breathe so this is always a big concern for us, we knew we had a very small window of opportunity to handle this issue at home and we were determined to stay out of the ER. Michele and I ran around, each of us performing our assigned tasks, getting meds, and of course trying to comfort Max. When we finally broke down and gave Max the “super-duper” cough medicine with codeine in it I’m pretty sure both Michele and I would have been quite happy to take a swig ourselves.

Once we got Max settled I crawled into bed next to him and watched the monitor like a hawk, as I saw his numbers trend in the wrong direction I started to calculate which ER we should go to. This involves a very complex algorithm which takes into consideration things such as how quickly things are transpiring and thus distance, which ER might be quickest (relatively), and most importantly where I want to be if we’re admitted (as if I want to be in ANY hospital). As monitor alarms sounded I prayed that we could just make it through the night because I was afraid that if we needed to go to the hospital Max would only become more stressed and then we’d really be in trouble. If he was having trouble breathing and regulating his heart rate while asleep I kept imagining how much worse it would be when he realized he was going back to the hospital. My prayers were answered, Max slept through the night and although his numbers were still not great they weren’t worse.

It was quite obvious that Max felt no better yesterday as he stayed in bed quietly watching TV and never once asked for a video game. If it weren’t for hourly vital sign checks I may just have forgotten he was in the bedroom. Max and quiet….now there’s a concept!

Now I’m waiting to hear from the pediatrician although I know there’s really nothing else we can do other than wait for the cough and congestion to subside. The other 64,000 dollar question will be school tomorrow – of all weeks this is Max’s week to be “star student” and he’s determined to not miss his 15 minutes of fame….as if this kid isn’t famous enough!