progress

Max is having a grand time in the hospital. He loves having everyone dote on him, and smiles and bats his eyelashes appropriately. He loves unplugging all of his cords so he can go to the bathroom, and especially loves to push the button to call the nurse when his IV starts beeping. The crazy thing is that he doesn't seem sick at all. No fever, his breathing is great, his lungs sound great, no runny nose or congestion. He is laughing, giggling, and cracking jokes. His oxygen saturation is just lower than normal, and he coughs every once in a while.

I still can't believe he has pneumonia. It happened so fast. Last Thursday he started to cough here and there. He hasn't had a cold since he was 18-months-old, so I was a little concerned. He wasn't acting sick and had no other symptoms. Thursday night I drove the kids to Palm Springs to spend time with J-P. He was working in one of our favorite hotels, so we went to spend the weekend with him. Max coughed the whole way. I figured he must be having an allergic reaction to some peanut dust or something in the air so I gave him benadryl. It didn't change a thing. The next day he was still coughing off and on, and had a low grade fever. His fever came and went, as did the coughing, over the next two days. Max's appetite was poor, and his energy level was lower than normal so I talked J-P into leaving a day early.

We got home Sunday night. After J-P put the boys to bed I went in to check on Max. He was slightly warm. His breathing wasn't labored at all, but it was a little faster than it should be (43 breaths a minute). I told J-P I wanted to take him to urgent care. He resisted rolling his eyes and said- "He has a cold. Maybe the flu. He's fine." I made him call his brother (who is a doctor) to ask him what we should do. After a little more convincing, he let me scoop him out of bed and go to urgent care.

They didn't seem too worried and gave me the "he has an upper respiratory infection" speech. I asked the doctor about pneumonia, and if he thought he needed a chest x-ray. He said no. They checked his oxygen saturation, to be on the safe side, and it was really low. The doctor ordered a breathing treatment. As the nurse was asking me the standard "is he allergic to any medications?" type questions, I got a feeling I should tell her about his peanut allergy. Her eyes got wide, and she immediately put the breathing treatment down and walked out of the room.

She and the doctor came in and said that particular breathing treatment cross-reacted with peanut allergy and could cause a serious reaction. Which, considering the state of his lungs, might have killed him. Luckily the nurse was a former allergy nurse and knew about the cross reaction. They gave him the traditional albuterol (with oxygen), and his levels still didn't go up enough. The doctor changed his mind and decided to do an x-ray.

Next thing I know the doctor rushes into the room, and amidst what I presume was a panic attack, emotionally tells me that Max has pneumonia quite badly in both lungs and that he called an ambulance because he needs to be admitted to the hospital immediately. The nurse calmed him down and said that it would be easier for me to drive him myself.

They didn't believe me at the hospital that he had pneumonia, because he didn't have a fever and his breathing was fine. His lungs sounded "good", they said. As soon as they got a copy of the x-ray they admitted him in a hurry, started an IV, stuck an oxygen tube up his nose, and started blood work.

He is doing great now. He has been off of oxygen for about 12 hours, and we just stopped the IV to see how it goes. Hopefully we will be able to go home in the next day or so. I will have to admit that I am enjoying my little vacation from cooking, cleaning, and toddler crowd control. And it's really nice to be able to spend some quality time with Max. I sure love him.