Pneumonia in May

Most people can do General Practioners or pediatricians and that's enough, but my family seems to need teams of specialists.

So we're in the hospital with this "pretty good case" of pneumonia (for a 2 year old or an adult, I'm not sure which) according to the pulmonary specialists. They say it's not the worst they've ever seen, but pretty impressive nonetheless.

So the first day we see a Dr Chris O-Something or other who turns out to be an Asthma and Cystic Fibrosis specialist. So I mention that I had tested positive during my pregnancy as a CF carrier and that we had tested Eran and he came up negative. I even went so far as to produce the letter stating that (in Hebrew - but hey it had the exact strain in English and with our translation that was enough for the doctors) This whole thing sparked Dr O's interest and they ordered a CF test done on my little man anyway since he could have any one of the other strains. Luckily the test was pretty non-invasive, just a simple 2 hour sweat test on his legs. But waiting for the results is agonizing. We got off lucky. Jonathan is CF free.

So meanwhile, the doctors have ordered 3 different strong IV antibiotics to be administered to fight the pneumonia while we're in the hospital. And the pulmonary specialist who we saw at the end wanted to send him home on an oral antibiotic that would have had to clear the Center for Infectious Diseases approval. Since they weren't exactly sure what strain of bacteria was causing the pneumonia (if any), they didn't get approval for that particular drug, but they sent him home on some other oral antibiotic that they suggested I supplement with Hershey's kisses to counteract the diarrhea. For some reason, my son is not a big chocolate or cookies fan. Go figure. But I sent extra kisses to daycare for the poor soul who was elected to fight with him to give him his meds during the day.

So anyway, mom is pregnant and can take Mr man down to the X-ray room, but cannot actually be in the room when they do the X-rays to see how the pneumonia is progressing or rather resolving. This is almost done every other day. And he starts crying the minute we step into that room with those big machines.

At this point, Jonathan is not very verbal. A few two word sentences is about the extent of his actual verbal capacity (and his name for me is "Me" - quite confusing sometimes), but he is very insitent about getting his views known in other ways...pointing and crying and whining mostly. And at this point we are still wondering if he is speech delayed because of his constant ear infections (hence the ear tubes a month earlier) or if it is something to do with his congenital CMV (hearing loss and other development delays are the earmarks of CMV at this stage - we get to wonder until age 4 or 5 I guess) I wonder how much non-verbal clues kids actually pick up on. Sometimes I didn't like the person who brought us down in the elevator for our routine chest x-rays and I was definately stressed out about the whole situation.

The good thing is that they eventually let us go home on oral antibiotics, with a follow-up X-ray in 2 weeks to see that the progression of the pneumonia is still good.

Jonathan's Heath Saga - Part 1

After many months of not blogging I can't even think where to begin.

I'm still pregnant and Jonathan is finally out of the hospital (again).

Eran is still hawking diamonds via telephone - I don't think I'll ever quite figure that one out, but it's working for him.

Here's Part 1 of our saga:

April
Jonathan has tubes put in his ears and his adnoids taken out (whereas the doctor (ENT) thought he was just going to cauterize them) After the procedure he come to the waiting room and suggests that my son probably has "a touch of pneumonia". I immediatly sent my diligent husband and mother upstairs to the pediatrician's office to relay the news that my son, the center of our universe, had successfully had the tubes put in and adnoids taken out and that probably he had a touch of pneumonia but they took care of him anyway. And then later I eventually got around to calling my pediatrician (it was on Jewish Standard Time - within the following week, I'm sure) and personally told him what the ENT said and that he was on Augmentin already for 10 days after the surgery. We left it at that.

May
Jonathan has a rough weekend with fever of 103 and his entire body turned red. We took turns staying home with him to let him rest and even sent him to daycare a few times, but by Thursday, (coincidentally the day I had a lunchtime job interview at Brennan's restaurant during which the school called my cell phone - needless to say that didn't go too well) I made mom take him and Eran to the doctor. They saw someone on call at a nearby practice as my pediatrician's mother had passed away that morning and I sent a detailed list of symptoms via fax to the doctor's office. She ordered a chest X-ray and somehow (luckily) the technican gave a CD copy to Eran to take to the doctor.

We made a reverse house call that night to the pediatrician on-call who lived in Bellaire and by the amount of time it took her to read the X-ray and by the look on her face (I had never met the woman) I could tell it wasn't too good. I told her Yoni was in the car and asked if she wanted to see him. She did and she brought out her stethoscope to listen to him. Her comment was there was NO air moving in the right side of his chest (the pneuomnia was that thick on that side) and that if she hadn't seen the X-ray already she wouldn't have known that was the problem.

So we go straight from her house to the emergency room as Jonathan is still lethargic but not really feverish. It is now approaching 10 PM. We get to the emergency room, have the vital signs taken, answer all the questions, fill out all the paperwork and then end up sitting in the waiting room with a miserable child for hours with not even a sippy cup to give him some water or a diaper to change him if the need arises.

Eventually after an exhausting few hours and the child getting more dehydrated by the minute, Eran takes action and gets us a bed in the hall and some gatorade to try to make him drink. A "doctor" who looks like she's just out of high school comes and asks us a few questions in the hall and takes the X-ray to look at. We never see that disc again.

Finally around 3 AM they put us in a triage room, start him on IV fluids and we finally see a doctor I can take more seriously - who comes in and out of the room several times before we actually can talk to him [stupid doctors' pagers].

I can't remember exactly what happens next but we eventually end up in a corner room on the 14th or 15th floor which is the cardiac floor for something or other.

I'll try to fill in the rest of that hospital stay later. Remeber this is the episode of pneumonia in MAY. I haven't even gotten to the barage of tests we do once we're there. Or to the excitement of the second hospital stay in SEPTEMBER.
More to come (soon, I hope)