Jonah hadn't really been feeling well since Friday but we chalked it up to him teething because he was drooling, fussy, with a little runny nose and feverish. Who knew that a visit to Marion's Pizza for Granny's 94th Birthday would land us at Children's Hospital hospitalized for pneumonia!?!
While I was at Granny's party at Marion's Pizza I noticed that Jonah was huffing and puffing, chattering his teeth and his lips were beginning to turn blue. I called his pediatrician from the Marion's Pizza parking lot (the one that was on call) and he could hear Jonah panting through the phone. He told me to rush him up the street to the Children's Urgent Care in Springboro. I didn't want to cause a scene at Granny's party or upset anyone so I just said I was leaving under the premise that Jonah was feeling feverish. I know I rushed out and really didn't get to say goodbye to everyone and it probably seemed kind of rude but I was in a panic and need to get Jonah to Urgent Care quickly. I have since reached out to Todd's family and explained what happened and have received many sweet and touching notes from them! Once I arrived at the Urgent Care, they took me straight back to a triage room because they could hear that Jonah was struggling to breath and they took his vitals and hooked him up to oxygen etc. Jonah's eyes began to roll to the back of his head from the high fever and his high heart rate and the nurse tried to calm me by saying that it was normal for kids to have seizures when their fever gets too high. I was in a panic so I called Todd (who was on his way to taking Stella to her soccer game) and my mom and they both met me at the Urgent Care immediately. When they hooked Jonah up to the EKG they found that he's heart rate was 225 and the normal for his age and size is in the 140-150 range so they thought that he might have SVT (Supra ventricular tachycardia) so they tried several methods to "shock" him out of it. First they tried to gag him by sticking the q-tip thingy in his throat (kinda like when they test you for strep) and that didn't work. Then they filled a tub up with ice water and dunked him in that and that didn't work. So then as last resort they put in an iv because they were afraid that they would have to inject him with a drug that would bring down his heart rate. At this point we were told that a transport team from Children's Medical Center was headed our way and we were headed to Children's via ambulance. Thankfully Dr. Badcock (whom I used to babysit his children more than 25 years ago) was the ER doc on call. It's so incredibly comforting to have a familiar face during times of uncertainty and he reassured us in telling us that it’s not uncommon for kids heart rates to increase when their temps do but that 225 was slightly higher then what they liked to see so they were going to do another EKG to rule out SVT and Chest x-ray and have the pediatric cardiologist and radiologist read them. They also drew blood and found that his white blood cells were elevated.
I cannot say enough great things about the staff at Children's Hospital! They were absolutely wonderful and kept us informed every step of the way and did everything to make our visit as comfortable as possible. We were also lucky that Julie (our sister-in-law) that works at Children's also happened to be working on the day we were there. She came in several times during her shift to check on Jonah and visit with us. Scott, brought us lunch on that day and he was able to visit with us over his lunch break.
I stayed the night at the hospital with Jonah because there was only 1 couch/bed in his room. Stella stayed the night with my parents and they took her to school the next day. Unfortunately Todd was continually running between the hospital and home to bring us the necessities and to deal with Buckeye (our dog).
Thankfully nearly 36 hours later, we were discharged and sent home. It was determined that Jonah had right upper lobe pneumonia and was anemic. We had to follow up with his pediatrician 48 hours after being discharged. Additionally we have a consultation with a pediatric cardiologist in early May to determine what caused Jonah's heartbeat to get so high...
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| Little man's IV |
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| Jonah rocking the hospital gown. |
Those 36 hours in the hospital seemed like the longest 36 hours of my life! I hated feeling so helpless and not being able to "fix" what was wrong or make Jonah feel better. I can honestly say that there is no worse feeling in the world as a parent when your child looks at you and there is NOTHING you can do to make everything all better. I found myself more than ever clinging on to my faith and begging God to watch over his child and protect him. I prayed at every chance I got and felt so blessed knowing that we had friends and family praying for him worldwide. Our priest, Father Angelous, reminded me that Jonah was a blessing and miracle child and that as such God was watching over him. It's during trying times in our life that we need to be reminded that He has a reason for everything that happens to us and that this illness/incident was part of his plan all along.
Todd and I took turns the remainder of the week, staying home with Jonah (we each burned a lot of vacation time I wasn't going to leave my baby). Moreover, I learned a lot from this entire experience. I learned that I should always trust my gut and that 9 times out of 10 a mothers intuition is always right. When I say that I mean, I knew all weekend that something didn't seem completely right with Jonah. You could say that I am sometimes a bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to the kids (I guess that could be seen as a good thing or a bad thing) but I remember late Saturday night looking up Jonah's symptoms on Web MD and telling Todd that I thought maybe Jonah had pneumonia but I kept convincing myself that surely he couldn't have pneumonia
I feel bad that we were not able to visit more with our family who had come together for Granny's 94th Birthday, but as unpredictable as kids can be so can illness!
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