About three days after we brought Chase home from the hospital Abbie started in with a cold. It did the rounds with the family and settled on Chase. He started with it about 3 days before Christmas. On the Friday after Christmas we thought he was doing better. However, Friday night he started disintegrating and by Saturday evening he was seriously retracting and head bobbing (a really bad sign I found out later). We took him to the ER where they gave him an albutiral breathing treatment. Then they took xrays. Before they even came back with those they calmly told me that Chase and I would not be going home for several days. The xrays looked like this:
If you look on the rights side of his lung (the left side on the picture) you can see a fuzziness. The doctors said it was either pneumonia or RSV, both are very serious for a three week baby who weighs less than 6 1/2 pounds. After a bunch of tests and blood draws they wheeled the two of us up to the PICU (pediatric intensive care unit).
I was very distraught at seeing my son hooked up to a bunch of wires and tubes. I have never had a child sick like this before. Here is my pip squeak in his red jail sale.
The final diagnosis: RSV. He was in the PICU until Sunday afternoon. Then we moved to a step down unit and were there until Tuesday night. We asked all of our family to pray we could bring home Chase by Tuesday and sure enough by Tuesday late afternoon they released us with oxygen. We strongly believe it was because of so many of your faith and prayers that he has done so well. I took him to his pediatrition yesterday and he told me that Chase is much better than he had expected.
