Avery is sick AGAIN!

Avery slept much better last night, however when he woke up, his breathing was really a lot worse. I didn't want to end up going to the ER again tonight so we decided to take him to the doctor right away this morning. Turns out, he has bronchiolitis...again, which is basically baby bronchitis. He was given a steroid, an antibiotic and an inhaler so that we could give him breathing treatments from home. The inhaler seems to help a lot and I'm glad we have one at home now to use in case he gets sick again. He is breathing almost normally already after just one treatment. I can't wait for him to stop getting sick all the time.

What I learned: Avery has bronchiolitis again.

A Scary Incident

I got a text from my Aunt Marie today asking me to tell my mom to call her brother Jack as my cousin Jace (age 15) was in the hospital (she is in the Czech Republic visiting her dad). I thought that maybe he was in the hospital again regarding his previous two foot surgeries, that maybe he just had an infection or something related to that. Boy was I wrong.

Apparently a few days ago, Jace had the same sort of virus that Avery had, which caused him to contract illness-induced asthma. He was prescribed medicine and an inhaler I think. Then today, he was having a hard time breathing so Jack decided to take him to urgent care. On the way there however, Jace passed out in the car, turned blue and his eyes rolled to the back of his head! They made it to the hospital and they had 10 people working on him to stabilize him. He had to be put on a ventilator because he wasn't breathing on his own since his airways were so compromised. He also had to be put on a feeding tube and they decided to try to keep him unconscious for 7-10 days. At this point, they have no idea if he will incur any brain damage from the lack of oxygen during the drive to the hospital. I am praying that he will be ok and that Avery's doesn't get anywhere close to being that severe!

What I learned: My cousin is in the hospital trying to recover from a similar virus that Avery had. Please pray for his recovery.

UPDATE: I am adding this update to this post on Tuesday, 3rd January. Jace is doing wonderfully! He turned around incredibly fast. As of today, he is no longer on the ventilator or the breathing tube. He is talking and acting completely normal, so there is no brain damage! He gets to leave the hospital tomorrow after they do some allergy tests to make sure that he didn't have an allergic reaction and that it was indeed just an illness-induced asthma attack.

ER Visit

This morning, Avery woke up with a bad cough and he was wheezing when he breathed. He seemed fine otherwise all day. Later in the evening, his breathing was getting pretty laborious and I counted that he was breathing 80 times per minute. According to Web MD, if your child is breathing more than 50-60 times a minute than you should immediately take your child to the ER. Well, I thought this seemed a bit hasty since Avery was still playing and acting normal, other than the breathing. So I called the 24-hour nurse hotline at my doctor's office and per the nurse, I indeed needed to take Avery to the ER. So mom drove me to Children's Hospital and Jared left work and met us there. There were about 4 other kids in the waiting room who were all breathing just like Avery. After two different doctors looked at him and after a chest xray, they determined that he did not have pneumonia, but a raging chest cold that was causing him to have slight wheezing in his upper respiratory tract. This is good because it means the wheezing is not asthma related. They said it was most likely a virus but since one of his ears looked like it was about to be infected, they decided to put him on antibiotics anyway. He also received a breathing treatment (a nebulizer with albuterol in it) which significantly slowed his breathing and cleared his passages enough that it stopped the wheezing. Altogether, we were only there about 2.5 hours, so it wasn't that bad. But we didn't get home until 1:00am, which means that Avery didn't go to bed until then. So now we have to deal with his sleep schedule being severely off again. Gah!

As a sidenote, I was thinking about where Avery could have gotten sick since we haven't left the house in days except to go to church and none of my family is sick. Then I remembered that I brought Avery to the church nursery during the Christmas Eve service on Saturday because he was being too talkative during the sermon. The last time I brought him to the nursery to play, he got fifth disease. So I don't think I will ever play with him in the nursery again!

What I learned: Avery has a bad virus and luckily he does not (as of yet) have asthma. Also, the church nursery apparently is a breeding ground for disease, even when you go there when no other kids are there!

Fifth Disease

So as I've previously mentioned, Avery had a fever for four days and it finally subsided yesterday afternoon and he hasn't had it since. However, last night he woke up screaming like he was in a lot of pain and was very hard to console. Then this afternoon, we noticed he had a rash on his head, torso and back. My mom said it looked/seemed like Fifth Disease. Now don't worry if you haven't heard of this ailment. In all my extensive reading and research since before Avery was born, I have never stumbled upon this disease. Upon further investigation on Web MD, I decided that he most likely does have it.

Fifth disease is called such because it is considered the fifth childhood disease, behind measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox. It's nickname is "slap cheek" because the rash usually is on the cheeks and makes it look like your cheeks have been slapped. Regardless of the odd name, Avery definitely seems to have it. The good news is, he is no longer contagious as once the rash appears, the contagious period is over, meaning you usually don't know you have it until you're done spreading it. The bad news is that since it's a viral infection, there is nothing that you can do about it except put rash cream on your skin if it itches or bothers you. Fifth disease also poses a risk to pregnant women, but the dangerous period is the first trimester and seeing as I'm at 18 weeks, I should have no cause to worry. Plus, apparently Sam had this when he was 15 months old and none of us caught it, which means we probably are immune to it. Anyway, Avery seems to be doing much better and now that we know what he has, we can at least continue to give him medicine for pain as some of the symptoms include headaches and joint pain, which might explain Avery's screaming fits for the past five nights. Let's hope this passes soon.

What I learned: Fifth Disease is not a made up disease and Avery has it!

BRAT

Last night while I was walking Avery to sleep at 3am, I felt a sudden pang in my stomach, my mouth started watering and BAM, I was downstairs throwing up (after handing Avery off to a very tired and confused Jared). It was really random. When I got back to bed, I thankfully found Avery asleep (although I was kind of pissed because I had been walking him for an hour and then he fell asleep in 4 minutes with Jared...). I however could not fall back asleep as my stomach was reeling. Throughout the course of this morning, I got sick 8 more times. I was incapable of keeping down food. Soda crackers, chicken broth, a breakfast bar, water and tea all proved unsatisfactory to my innards and were thoroughly discarded soon upon arrival. To make me feel worse, I actually had jury duty today and had already postponed it twice due to nursing and now I had to literally call in sick for jury duty. Jared took care of Avery while I laid in bed and made several sprinting trips to the bathroom. By lunchtime I moved to the couch to make the trip to the bathroom much easier (and faster). My mom took over watching Avery when she got home. I was literally helpless. I didn't want to move, not even to roll over. What on earth did I have? I literally did nothing for Avery all day-I didn't change his diaper, feed him, put him down for naps, or put him down for bed. I did NOTHING.

By early evening, I was feeling better enough to sit up and my mom suggested I eat the BRAT diet. What on earth is the BRAT diet? Apparently it's what you should eat when you have an upset stomach: Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast. I personally would change bananas to broth, but that's because I hate bananas. So I had applesauce for supper and it was the only thing I kept down all day!

By 10:00pm I was feeling much better but decided to go to bed. Avery thankfully had the best night he's had in weeks and I woke up feeling more rested than I've felt in a year and a half. I am now completely better and chalk it up to either food poisoning or a 24 hour stomach bug. I have to admit though, I almost feel like it was worth getting sick to have an entire day off, do nothing and get tons of sleep and to finally feel rested. I seriously can't remember the last time I didn't feel tired.

What I learned: When you are spewing your guts out and can't keep anything down, remember the BRAT diet.