Back when Ellie was born and all of this started I debated creating a new blog to post updates on to keep family and friends informed on how Ellie was doing. At the time I was hoping it was only going to be a month or two of Ellie on oxygen and getting her weight gain on track and there wouldn't be enough to update on to dedicate an entire blog to, so I instead decided to post the updates here on our family blog and temporarily open it up to the public. As it turns out I probably should have started the blog, and who knows, maybe I still will. But as for now here I am posting the same old story yet again.
Ellie has had a pretty good week at home and I was finally starting to feel like maybe we could do this after all. Then yesterday afternoon something changed. Ellie was coughing and gagging a lot and when we suctioned we weren't getting much out. We were afraid her secretions were drying out and tried to get as much humidification through her trach mask as possible. But as the night went on Ellie's breathing was becoming more and more labored, her sats were dropping, and she started having that eerily familiar dusky look about her. At 1 am she was making me too nervous so we called my mom to come and stay with the kids (it was only our second night with all the kids home) and Scott and I took Ellie to the hospital. She was really struggling to breathe and we didn't feel comfortable driving all the way up to Primary's so we took her to Timpanogas Hospital. From the minute we walked through the ER door you could tell the doctors, nurses, and therapists were all out of their comfort zone with a infant trach and wanted to get her out of there as soon as possible. They were able to stabilize her enough using CPAP for lifeflight to transport her up to Primary's.
*Side note: It is Mason life long dream to fly on a lifeflight helicopter and when he found out about it the next morning his response was, "Ellie is sooo lucky!!" I'm sure she'd trade placed with you in a heartbeat bud.
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Ellie tested positive for rhinovirus, a fancy name for the common cold. They think that the change in type and amount of her secretions mixed with some drying out was just a little too much for her. So she is once again here in the PICU requiring CPAP which gives her some extra oxygen and positive pressure to help decrease her work of breathing (she has not been requiring any oxygen during the day at home). So they'll keep her here and continue to give her the extra support she needs until she gets through the sickness. Who knew a cold could cause so many problems. I'm not excited to see what happens come RSV season?
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