We have been battling RSV for the past week and a half. It is a sucky, awful virus that causes a ton of mucus and it hits infants and the elderly particularly hard. In toddlers and young children it usually turns into croup and for everyone else it is just a very nasty cold. The real kicker about this virus is that it does not peak until anywhere from days 5-10 so once the fever breaks you think you in the clear but you so are not!
Last Monday I thought Jax just didn't sound right so I took him into the doctor. As soon as she heard him cough she said she knew it was RSV. She gave us a nebulizer, two prescriptions, and sent us over to the lab for the RSV/flu test. We found out that night that it was RSV and that she wanted to see him every day to monitor his O2 levels. By Wednesday his fever was gone and she said we didn't have to come back until Friday so we thought we were all good until I heard him when I came home from work on Thursday. I knew something wasn't right but we had an appointment in the morning so we stayed put. On Friday morning his O2 had dropped to 94 and we were admitted to Kent General so he could be given breathing treatments every 2 hours and be put on oxygen. Let's just say that unless there is no other option we won't be going there again and at that time there was not, Christiana and AI were full of RSV and flu kids. The tip of the iceberg for my complaints are that he didn't have his first breathing treatment in the hospital for five hours and they didn't put him on oxygen until he dropped to 89 that night and only then because I kept bugging them.
The one thing they did do when we got there was getting him a chest x-ray. It turned out that he also developed RSV pneumonia so they started a course of antibiotics and inserted an IV for fluids. So by Friday night the kid was getting oxygen, had in an IV, and had the pulse oximeter on his foot. I had to swaddle him because he kept trying to pull everything out. Jax is such a trooper, he rarely fussed, and everyone commented during our stay how cute and easy going he was. That's my little man!
The IV came out on Saturday because he blew a vein and they were happy enough with his intake/output that they didn't have to put a new one in. He stayed on oxygen until Sunday morning and had to be monitored for a full 24 hours off oxygen before he could be released. By this time they moved his breathing treatments to every 4 hours and we started doing chest pt on him. We were finally discharged Monday night although everyone was wishy washy about it. If I had to do it over again I would have pushed to stay an extra night since I was so stressed about taking him home when the nurses and doctors weren't super definitive about their decision. I had him back Tuesday morning to the doctors since because I didn't love his breathing over night and his O2 was a little low but not low enough to worry about it. She explained that he is always going to sound worse when he first gets up and that it should clear throughout the day and it sure as shit did. I was up with him at 3:30 this morning and he sounded pretty good.
Our little man isn't allowed back to daycare for a while. Well, he could go but the doctor wants him home for at least a week, maybe two. The reason for this is that his immune system is so shot from the RSV that he is going to catch every little virus that he comes in contact with and we don't want him back in the hospital so he needs to be in tip top shape before he starts again. We were also warned that although immune this year, he can get RSV again next year and that even a bad cold could send us back to the hospital because of wheezing/oxygen levels. The good news is that there is no family history of asthma so he may very well outgrow the wheezing while sick in the next 5-7 years and it will never turn into ashtma. Or who knows he may be fine next year although with his troubles the first month of life with breathing I am guessing his bronchial tube is just super sensitive and inflames easily. RSV can do some serious damage to the bronchial tubes but we are hoping that since he was on breathing treatments the whole time and in the hospital it will be minimal. At the end of the day though there are worse things than asthma and with all of the new things out hopefully it won't be too much of a problem if he doesn't outgrow it.
Chris and I now have the adult version of RSV and it is tons of fun! I have been sick/having allergy issues for a month now, it is insane the amount of times I have been to the doctors. I am now on a z-pack since the amox wasn't working, an inhaler, mucinex D, and a codine cough syrup that doesn't help much. Chris starting taking airborne as soon as he felt the cold coming on and is doing much better already.
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