ER Trip #5

This weekend marks James 5th ER trip since the beginning of May. This was by far the scariest trip ever. Shortly after dinner Saturday evening James got fussy because he wanted picked up. My mom, who was visiting, picked him up and we noticed that his cry was off so I took him from her to try to calm him down. At this point I noticed that he was turning blue. At some point he must have aspirated some food left in his mouth or some saliva because he couldn't catch his breath. We did back thrusts and my mom took over (yay for a mom who is trained in infant CPR) as I called 911 and Dave ran down the block to the police station. My mom gave rescue breaths which finally caused a response from James and the ambulance arrived shortly there after. He was rushed to the ER at Sewickley Hospital (about a mile from our house). Once in the ER, they started bagging James immediately and he then he began to return to himself, although he was exhausted from the whole experience. The Sewickley Hospital decided to have him transferred to Children's of Pitt because of his history. Since he had to have CPR, James and I got to fly by helicopter to Childrens. By this point an hour had passed and he was back to himself (Thank God!). He seemed to quite enjoy the ride.

When we got to Children's we waited in the ER for several hours while they got a room ready for us. They wanted to admit him to observe him for 24 hours. Once we got up to his room, James was having a low resting heart rate which concerned them. This is when they decided to transfer him to the PICU for closer monitoring. Overnight he had 2 EKG's, a few chest x-rays, some blood tests, and virtually no sleep (as the tests went on until 3 am). All of the overnight tests appear normal. The ICU docs want to monitor him for 24 hours in the ICU and they had an Echo cardiogram done (we don't have the official results of this one yet, but we are expecting it to be normal). Once the ICU docs feel they have ruled out everything, then James will most likely be moved to the surgical floor for a few more tests, including a contrast study and a swallow test.

The docs are pretty sure it was a bad case of something down the wrong pipe, but because of his history they want to rule out all other cardiac, neurological, and GI possibilities. We will probably be in the hospital until Tuesday. Please pray that this was just a fluke and nothing else is going on with James. He is tired and hungry (he's not allowed to eat until all his tests are complete, which could be a few days), but doing okay other than that. Hopefully tonight we will all be able to get a full nights rest.