A Mini Vacation to …….the Hospital

Sometimes it’s really hard to be a mom. Especially those times when your child is suffering and there’s nothing you can do to help it. Luckily there are other people out there who know how to help and make him feel better. I’ve thanked Heavenly Father many times the last few days for modern medicine and healthcare.

(This may be too long and have more information than you would have asked for, but I want to remember it all, so just read what you want!)

On Saturday Logan had a runny nose and cough every now and then. I told Jeremy “He’s going to have trouble breathing tomorrow.” Oh how I wished that I hadn’t been right! And I definitely didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was.

Sunday morning, around 5 am (okay, 4 am with the time change) Logan woke up crying. I went in there to get him back to sleep and when I picked him up I could feel that he was breathing incredibly hard and fast. Like, his whole body moved when he breathed hard. I tried to put him back down, but that lasted like two minutes. So I went out to the front room and held him, then finally called Jeremy out and asked him to call Koy who was working at the ER that is about 7 minutes away. He told us breathing problems could be pretty serious, so about twenty minutes later we decided to take him in. Koy looked at him and said that we definitely needed to check him in. Logan’s oxygen levels were extremely low, so he was given some oxygen, he had a chest x-ray, and an hour long breathing treatment. Logan didn’t love any of this, and didn’t want anything to do with anybody but me (he even got upset when I had Jeremy hold the mask to his face,) but I do think it helped that he knew Koy and it wasn’t some stranger. About two hours later, Koy told us that Logan needed to be admitted him to the hospital. “No!” I said. But of course, doctor knows best. He said he waited longer than he would have if we weren’t family.

So around nine thirty-ish Sunday morning, we were moved up to the children’s center, an extension of the Primary Children’s Hospital. He was hooked up to oxygen and they monitored his oxygen level and respiratory rate, which was about twice what it should have been when we first went to the ER. He also got a few breathing treatments, and the worst part of the WHOLE visit was when they suctioned out his nose. They stuck a tube up there and sucked all the gunk out, and he HATED it (understandably.) He screamed the whole time and it took him quite a while to recover from it. I had to hold him down while they were doing it and it was just so hard to watch. Poor baby.

For the most part though, he was really good. Every now and then he would point to his nose and say “Nose. Out.” It was very sad, but I think he eventually just resigned to the fact that all these people and all this stuff were going to bothering him whether he liked it or not.  So he sat on my lap and watched TV and played with some toys. He did get a bit restless though after awhile. He was confined the the bed because all the stuff attached to him was so short. The doctor had them attach a longer oxygen tube and remove the oxygen level monitor so he could walk around for a bit. He loved it….at first. Until he thought it meant he could go “outside”, which of course he couldn’t. Oh how he hated not being able to leave the room! I handled most of this pretty well. I knew Logan was going to be okay, but I may have gotten a bit emotional a few times. Like when he was admitted to the hospital, when his nose got suctioned, when we left the room to let him get to sleep, and when people asked me if I was okay.

As for the diagnosis, they were going back and forth between asthma (which they don’t like to diagnose before age 2) and bronchiolitis, a viral infection (like RSV.) He didn’t respond to the asthma treatments the way an asthmatic would, so the final diagnosis was bronchiolitis. It seems Logan is a bit susceptible to that when he has a cold.

Most of the time, he was happy and friendly. And when he was in the right mood, he would say “Thank you” and “Bye bye!” to the staff. One of the respiratory therapists that came in just loved him. She came in and said “Oh, they told me about your blond curly hair and big blue eyes! You are the cutest baby ever! You should be in magazines or something!” He could tell she loved him, and he loved her right back.

I had them bring in a crib for Logan to sleep in at night (which I now wish I hadn’t done, I think it would have been better for both of us to have kept the bed), and Jeremy and I waited outside the room to give Logan time to fall asleep. I told Jeremy that he didn’t need to stay the night with us and that he should go to work, since Logan was doing fine and there was nothing to do all day but sit there. That night was one of the longest nights of my life. Logan’s monitors were going off nonstop, nurses kept coming in and checking on him (which I was totally fine with, of course), and Logan would wake up scared, and sometimes ask for daddy. I would watch Logan’s oxygen level and see it go up to 94% then drop to 85%, and I was so worried that he wasn’t getting better. I got maybe an hour or two of sleep. I was so happy when it was morning and actually time for me to be awake!

Monday at the hospital was a good day. Logan wanted to go outside, of course, but he did really well and they were no longer monitoring his respiratory rate and he didn’t get any more breathing treatments. The only concern at this point was his oxygen level, which stayed stable, even when they lowered the amount of oxygen they were giving him from 1 liter down to .8 liters, then down to .5 liter. I really loved his nurse, too. Her name was Jessica and she was so good with Logan; she played with him and sang to him and he loved her. He even let her take him out to the car when they released us.

After lowering his oxygen to .5 liter and seeing that his oxygen level stayed at a steady 97%, even while sleeping, the doctor told me that I had two options. We could either be released with Logan still on some oxygen, or stay the night and most likely be released the next day with a  clean bill of health. We decided to go home and let Logan sleep in his own bed and move around a little bit. So around 5 pm we went home! It was sad to have him still on oxygen, but it was better than having Logan confined to that room any longer. We called Intermountain Home Health and someone came and brought us an oxygen machine and another tank; the tube on the machine was 50 feet and long enough to have Logan walk around the house. HALLELUJAH!!!

Tuesday morning I called Logan’s pediatrician and scheduled a time to go in and meet with her so she could check his oxygen level and see if he still needed to be on it. They sent Logan home on .75 liter of oxygen, and his oxygen level was 95%, so his doctor was first talking about keeping him on it until the end of the week. But after talking to her she lowered the oxygen some, then checked him a few minutes later. He was still at the same level, so she continued to lower the oxygen until he was on nothing. At the end of the visit when we were waiting for them to check on him the last time, he started to ask for his blanket, which I of course hadn’t brought. Then he asked to go to bed (he never asks to go to bed). So I put him on my lap, gave him my jacket to hold in place of a blanket, and sang to him until he fell asleep. The poor kid was exhausted. His oxygen level remained the same the whole time, even while asleep, so the doctor told us he could go home without it! I was so excited!
Sad boy. He did NOT want the camera out.

He sure loves trucks!

He loved this race track the hospital had. He played with it for hours.


He was so tired he had to lay down while playing with it.
Logan and I catching up on some much needed sleep. And down to .5 liter of oxygen!

As sad as it is that he’s wearing them, aren’t these hospital pajamas so cute on him?

Grandpa catching up on some sleep, too! And using Logan’s little blanket for some warmth.

My dad was playing peek-a-boo outside the door. He stopped playing, and a short while later my parents heard Logan saying "Boo!" and saw his standing outside the door. Apparently he learned how to open doors at the hospital.
Logan wanting to play with his oxygen machine. Luckily we only had this thing for one night.

Back to his old self!!! (Of course I’ll keep him inside for a few days to fully recover.)

It was such a long few days, but it turned out well and Logan is now acting like his old happy self (except for the fact that he now thinks he can drink milk and watch TV all day long!) I thank all of you who came to visit and prayed for Logan. We really appreciate the love and support.

Now that I know Logan is okay, I can start to worry about how we are going to pay for this. I've got a feeling it's going to be pretty expensive. Donations can be sent to..... Ha ha, just kidding.