Easter in the ER

Well, our Easter had a big surprise that didn’t involve candy coatings or egg-laying mammals. Instead, after a great Saturday visit from grandma and Michael Bennett, we woke up after a sleepless night with a sick Mathias to find the dude was breathing about twice as fast as he should have been.

To be on the safe side, we made our second holiday visit to the emergency room. We headed in around 8 a.m., and the doctors confirmed what we knew: he had a fever. He was breathing fast. They thought they heard a bit of wheezing in his lungs. So they prescribed a breathing treatment, where a mask is strapped over his face to pump in chemicals to open his airways–sort of like a five-minute burst from an inhaler.

This didn’t go over well. Already sick, Mathias cried just when the doctors and nurses (who were great) went for a listen with their stethoscopes. So when they strapped the mask on…oh boy. He tried to squirm away and rip the mask off, so we basically had to immobilize him, hold his little hands down and even hold the mask to his face when he figured out he could use his chin to shrug it off. Screaming the whole time, obviously.

Trying to calm him down, we assure him it was “almost done.” So that became a little tearful mantra for him: “Almost done,” he’d sob through the mask. “Almost done.”

His oxygen levels improved, but he was still breathing faster than he should have been, so they gave him two more breathing treatments and then a chest x-ray to make sure he didn’t have pneumonia. That came out clean, but they had to strap him into a little stool, Hannibal-Lecter style, to get a good image, which went over about as well as the breathing treatments.

Finally, after six hours, the doctors and us agreed that he’d be better off at home, even if his breathing still wasn’t ideal. Mathias was game; he’d been asking to go home since we got there, even putting his shoes on at 10:30. So they equipped us with an inhaler and breathing tube that fit over his face to deliver some more breathing treatments at home. We had to do that every four hours, including a 3 a.m. wake-up call, but we finally finished today!

Mathias with his inhaler.

He’s doing way better now. The day after his treatments, he was throwing stuff around the apartment, jumping around and shouting–all good signs of health.

He still seems a little traumatized though; he’s been waking up with nightmares that sounds like he’s in the hospital and has spent the past two nights in our bed. He’s also applied his heartrending “almost done” sob to bowls of cereal or diaper changes–anything he doesn’t want to deal with. But he’s healthy and happy and should be back to normal soon. Hopefully he doesn’t need another trip to the ER on the next big holiday!