A Not So Fun Weekend for This Little Girl

We began our Saturday morning like any other and by late morning I decided to go and run a few errands while Brett took the kids over to his parents to work in Bob's wood shop. Raylee seemed to have the beginnings of a slight cough that morning, but nothing we were too worried about. Around 3pm I called Brett to see what they were up to and he said that he was worried about Raylee because over the course of a few hours her breathing seemed to be getting progressively worse and very labored. I decided to pick her up and take her to the Phoenix Children's Urgent Care to get her checked out. As soon as I sat down to check her in the lady at the desk quickly paged the staff that there was a little girl that was experiencing difficulty breathing. This kind of shocked me because her reaction was so serious. Raylee and I were quickly taken to the back where they checked her vitals and found that her heart rate was extremely high, her breathing was too fast and labored and she was experiencing a lot of wheezing. They started a breathing treatment to see if it would help open her airways and gave her an oral steriod. After the first treatment they took some chest x-rays (which came back ok) and began yet another breathing treatment. Unfortunately, the treatments didn't seem to be solving the problem, so they called Banner Desert to have her admitted. At this point I was really getting worried because I had no idea what was going on. The words upper respiratory infection and asthma were casually given, but nothing definitive.

Here's Raylee getting her breathing treaments at Urgent Care.

Brett had then joined me at urgent care and we made our way over to the hospital. It was about 7:30pm by this point and once we got checked in the hospital we were put on the waiting list to be seen by a nurse. It was a very busy night for the pediatric wing, so we knew we were probably in for a very long night. Once Raylee was called back they proceeded to do yet another breathing treatment. We were then told to go back to the waiting room to wait awhile until they would check to see if she was any better. After about a 2 and a half hour wait I finally went back to the admissions desk to see if they could check her again. Luckily, we just happen to be the next in line for Raylee's chart to be pulled, so we were taken back to a room for a dr to check her out. Unfortunately, little Raylee wasn't any better and so they wanted to admit her for the night.

Here's our fun night in the waiting room.

Raylee wasn't so sure about the whole IV thing and kept wanting to rip it out, so they had to tape a diaper around it. Let's just say our little smartie pants ended up ripping out her IV before her stay was up...along with every cord or plug they put on her.

All nice and bundled up.


Around 7am, Sunday morning, they wanted to switch Raylee to a new room, but luckily she was going to be considered just a pediatric patient and not a PICU patient anymore...a little bit of relief. Her heart rate and breathing were doing a little better, but her oxygen levels were still a concern. After a long day of waiting around and several breathing treaments later, it was about 3:45pm and they finally decided to see if they could take Raylee off the assisted oxygen and see how she did on her own. Luckily, she seemed to be improving, but they wanted to make sure she could go overnight without any help.
This little energizer bunny couldn't stand being in her room one more minute, so the nurses finally unplugged her from everything and let us walk around a bit.
Everyone in the hospital thought she was just the cutest thing. I wish they were in the room with us with her going stir crazy and ripping everything out and wanting to get the heck out of there. She is certainly a little fighter and I have no doubts that there won't be anything that will keep this little girl down.

After having some very welcomed visitors that evening, I sent Brett home to get some sleep. Raylee and I got to hang out again for another night in those awful hospital rooms, getting little sleep again. Luckily, she had a really good night and was able to maintain good oxygen levels, so the possibility of us going home was looking better. The dr came in this morning and felt like she had really improved and with a breathing machine and prescribed medication we could take over from home...hallelujah! Her cultures seem to be looking negative, so the dr is basically calling it an ashtma attack. She is too young to be diagnosed with asthma, but all of her symptoms go right in line with it. We will continue to monitor her for the next couple days and do treatments as needed, but hopefully we are on our way to a full recovery.