Our jaunt to Children's

Jack's symptoms of runny nose and congestion, cough, fever of 102, small rash around his mouth, no appetite and general malaise couldn't have come at a better time. Really. The Allegheny Health Department told us to be watching for these very signs, so if it was crazy to think he may have had the measles, she was the one who enticed it. But if I hadn't had that notion of the possibility of measles, I may not have taken him in to get checked out at all- or at least when we did. I try not to be the mother who takes her kids in for every illness. We'd be there every week, as sick as we've been this winter. I guess I just wanted to rule out the measles.
Dr. Twan seemed pretty concerned when he listened to Jack's lungs and said it sounded like he may have pneumonia. He and the assistants were in and out, trying to give him breathing treatments and listen to his lungs. He was wheezing, and his ribs were going in and out pretty far because they said he was working so hard to breathe. He threw up in the doctor's office I think because he had gotten so worked up about the breathing treatment mask he had to wear. He was burning up but being such a good sport (about everything but that breathing mask). All the while, Abigail was being a good little girl playing on the floor.
After almost two hours at the doctor's, they sent us to Children's Hospital to get an X-Ray and said to expect to stay over-night (Mike came from work and met us at the doctor's, since both of them, going on zero nap time, were getting hard to handle by myself). Understandably, we were pretty worried about the little guy.
When we got to Children's, the four of us had to wear masks to Jack's room, since they weren't sure of the problem, and I had mentioned the phone call from the health dept. as a precaution. It's hard to hold those things on babies who are resisting in every way.
I loved how every person who came in to talk to us or check on Jack, except one intern, treated us like we were nuts for mentioning measles at all. "So why do do you think you babies have the measles?" one woman laughed at us. I just explained to her that our doctor referred us to go there for an X-ray after listening to his lungs becasue he was wheezing pretty badly and that I had merely mentioned the phone call because I thought they would want to be aware of it. But on all of our papers was written Cheif Concern: Measles, so everyone who entered our room first suited up, hazmat style.
Jack had to receive a one-hour nebulizer treatment and then another twenty minutes of it later on, so Mike and I took turns holding it up to his mouth, which he protested profusely. It's heart wrenching to see your two-year-old getting blood taken and prepped for an IV (which they did wrong the first time, by the way, so we had to hold him down twice). The RN wrapped so much medical tape around the IV going into his hand to keep him from messing with it. He called it a "big band-aid."
We passed the time reading Where the Wild Things Are, The Seven Silly Eaters (Thank you, Wards-- Jack loves this book) and Curious George at the Airport over and over and over and over again, watching silent TV and bouncing Abigail on our laps (until she finally fell asleep in my arms after screaming for half an hour. We were discharged around 11:30 once they explained his condition and medication-- albuterol for asthma (which may be an ongoing problem, or it may just be illness-induced), which we'll have to give him puffs of through a special children's inhaler for at least a week, perhaps a nebulizer that he'll have to breathe at home and a steroid medicine to reduce inflammation in his lungs. So it seems like temporary asthma (they had another name for it I can't remember) in addition to an upper respiratory infection.
We're relieved in many ways-- no measles, no pnemonia, no over-nighter at Childrens, and Jack seems to be doing a lot better today. After fighting the three previous times with his inhaler, he sat still for me this afternoon and cooperated while I gave him his "puffs." He'll go back to the doctor tomorrow for a follow-up appointment to see how he's doing.

Now if we can only get past this weather. We drove home in blizzard-like conditions last night, behind a truck that kept fishtailing all over the place. This darned global warming.