Eddie's First Ambulance Ride

Yes, that's right, we got to ride in an ambulance last night. Not something I ever wanted to do! Edward actually slept through that part of the night.

After school yesterday, I went to talk to a few people and got back to my classroom to find my school phone ringing, three missed calls, two voicemails and a text message on my cell phone. Both Jacob and the kids' babysitter were calling to let me know that Edward was having trouble breathing and we needed to hurry home. I called his doctor's office on my way and after asking me a million questions about his condition, they informed me that they couldn't see him and recommended that I take him to the Phoenix Children's Urgent Care. Seriously?! I spent all that time on the phone so you could tell me you're too busy to see him!

When we got to Urgent Care they got him all hooked up to the machines and for a second thought that the machine was broken. No, there was nothing wrong with their equipment. His heartbeat really was at 220 bpm and his temperature really was over 105 (not sure exactly how high, it was off their chart). They told us they would do a few breathing treatments and if they didn't work he would have to be transferred to Phoenix Children's Hospital.

The first treatment did nothing, so they decided to give him epinephrine. That worked really well (even though he threw up all over the mask, and me, in the middle of the treatment). They told us that we would have to hang out for 2 hours so they could observe him and make sure he wasn't going to rebound. At this point it was 7 pm, so Jacob left to go get us some dinner and I watched Edward while he inhaled a package of Goldfish that the nurse brought him. By the time Jacob got back, he was struggling to breath again. So they called the ambulance to send us off to the hospital.

It took quite a while to get out of the Urgent Care, we waited 20 minutes for the first ambulance and when they got there, their gurney was too wide to strap a carseat to. So we waited another 20 minutes for a different ambulance with a smaller gurney in it.

When we got to Phoenix Children's, it was absolute madness. There were literally gurney's with patients in them lining the halls. Because Edward is so little and was having breathing problems, they had a room waiting for us. Of course, the ambulance ride cured him and he was pretty much fine. He had several doctors come check him and they decided to release us after only a few hours.

The final verdict is that he has croup and possibly bronchiolitis and asthmatic tendencies that made it worse. Emily got bronchiolitis at about the same age, hers wasn't nearly as bad, but they told us about the same thing. The can't know for sure at this age if the kids are asthmatic, but there is so much family history of it that they definitely have tendencies toward it and respiratory illness will bring those tendencies out. Hooray for us.

Edward is still feeling sick, but doing much better. He has a nasty sounding cough and his breathing is really loud and raspy.



We did end up at the ER again tonight because he was starting to have a really hard time breathing again. Of course, he started breathing fine as soon as we were checked in. Murphy's Law. He has also managed to lose his pacifier, so tonight could be interesting! One of the doctors we talked to yesterday said that he would wake up about every 4 hours because he was struggling to breathe and that if we walked around with him and got him calmed down he would go back to sleep. So far he's been like clockwork about that. Very dependable child.



And here is his sister with her cute new haircut. Yes, she is morally opposed to looking at the camera. I have tried multiple times to get a picture of her haircut and it just isn't happening.