We went to see the doctor and she immediately ordered a bunch of tests and sent us to the ER. She was concerned about a serious infection, pneumonia or heart failure. Ali had to have a chest x-ray, lots of swabs and cultures and a blood sample taken from her neck (I don’t know if that was worse for her or me!). Once we had the tests done, the followed us over and we went through the results. We talked for a while about whether or not Ali would be going home that night and eventually decided that as long as we were prepared to take her to the children’s hospital by ambulance if we needed to that we could take her home.
So, we know that Ali is not in heart failure and she doesn’t have pneumonia. Most likely she is really struggling from a virus. It is possible that she has RSV so we are waiting for the results from the RSV swab.
Today, Ali is doing okay. She still has a horrible cough when she’s awake and moments of struggling a bit to catch her breath but she is able to settle down enough to nap in between coughing fits and in general she seems more settled. I really regret that we didn’t take her to the ER right away when she woke up so sick. I don’t think it would have changed the outcome. I think that we are lucky that we didn’t get ourselves into a serious situation by trying to keep her home overnight. It’s so hard to know what to do with a kid like Ali when they’re sick! So it has been a scary weekend but I think we’re going to be okay.
Another Scary Day. Originally Posted June 5, 2011
On Thursday, we spent a lovely afternoon with Ali sitting in the shade at a BBQ that RE/MAX was having as part of their “Pennies For Ali” campaign. Ali slept through the entire BBQ which at the time we thought nothing of. When we went home, I put her to bed and she continued to sleep. We put Madi to bed around 7:00 (Ali was still sleeping) and Jason had to go out, so he left and I settled in for a quiet evening. Shortly after Jason headed out, Ali woke up and I could tell that something wasn’t right. She had a high fever and she didn’t seem to be able to catch her breath. She suddenly had a horrible cough and was very congested. I immediately got her out of her crib and I took her into bed with me and I went to work cooling her down and making sure that she was well hydrated. Eventually I was feeling like we were in a serious situation so around midnight I called Jason and said that he needed to hurry home because I thought that Ali needed a doctor. When Jason got home he decided to take her down to the basement (which is usually cooler than upstairs)to see if she would cool down. Once she got down there she seemed a bit better and since her colour was good and she was cooling down we decided to wait it out until morning if possible. Poor Jason sat up with her all night. By morning it had become apparent the we really needed to see a doctor but we thought we could wait and see one of Ali’s doctors so we called our family doctor and requested an appointment for that day. We have it arranged that she will see us on an emergency basis when requested which is great because she has a 1 month wait for appointments!