Weekend Scare

We had another small scare with Elijah this weekend. Chris had drill so we had to go up to MN. Before we left on Thursday we noticed that Elijah was getting a small case of the sniffles so we decided to bring him in to the doctor just to make sure he was ok to travel. The doctor didn't find any sign of infection and said the only thing he would recommend is nebulizer treatments if he starts having trouble breathing (we didn't have a nebulizer, but planned on getting one). We decided to make the trip and got to the cities Thursday night and Elijah was doing fine. As the night went on I kept waking up hearing him being restless. Finally he woke up crying at about 5am and I went to get him and he was breathing fairly quickly. Chris and I decided we didn't want to take any chances so we brought him to the emergency room that was closest to us. When we got in his oxygen level was in the 80's, which is not high enough. They brought him into the room and put him on oxygen right away and then a few minutes later they brought us a nebulizer treatment and had me give that to him. After that was finished his oxygen level was in the high 90's, which is great!

The doctor we had was telling us that he would prefer to transfer us to the Children's Hospital in St. Paul since there are specialists there and he was concerned about Elijah's history. However, he called over there and they told him that all they would do at that point was watch Elijah and see how he does for a while. So the doctor decided to let him sit for about an hour without any oxygen and see if his stats stayed up, and they did!

It was quite obvious that all Elijah needed was a nebulizer treatment and it helped his breathing significantly. The doctor told us that because of everything that Elijah went through, it is likely that every time he even gets a little cold he is going to have "bronchio-spasms" and his airways may swell a bit and he will need a nebulizer treatment to help with his breathing.

All we needed at that point was to get a nebulizer of our own. We waited for quite a while before the respiratory therapist came to talk to us and when she finally did she had great news! She said she had made some calls and found a company that had a gently used portable nebulizer that they were willing to just give us! That was a HUGE blessing! Nebulizers tend to be around $200, so to get one for free was absolutely a God thing! And even above and beyond that, the man delivered it to the house we were staying at in the cities! It was so great!

After that whole ordeal we went about the rest of our weekend just fine! Elijah got a nebulizer treatment about every 4-6 hours (except overnight) and he did great with it. Now that we are home he is down to maybe just 2 treatments a day, and I think we might be done with those by tomorrow.

Praise the Lord for getting us out of that one! It was pretty scary for Chris and I on Friday morning, but God is faithful as always :-)