Over the last 4 months, Bennett has had about 5 times where he seemed to be wheezing / short of breath. Most of the time, they didn’t last very long, and they were always on the weekend so they didn’t get to the point where we felt like we needed to take him to the ER. On Thanksgiving, he seemed to be struggling all afternoon – probably from noon until we left Nate’s parents’ house at 8, so after debating all day, we decided we’d better take him to the ER on our way home. We were there about 2.5 hours and they gave him a breathing treatment with the nebulizer, gave us an unofficial asthma diagnosis, and send us home with an inhaler. He seemed much better after the treatment, and was ok on Friday – we did give him the inhaler a couple times but it seemed to help and he didn’t get too bad. Saturday was a different story though – he needed the inhaler when he first woke up, and it didn’t seem to help for very long – he was still wheezing and struggling to breathe. We decided to take him down to the instacare that afternoon, and they sent us over to the ER as soon as we got there. We spent about 3 hours in the ER before they decided he needed to be admitted overnight so they could watch him and make sure he was recovering. The one night turned into two and it was a pretty crazy weekend, but we survived. Nate unfortunately stayed with him the first night so I could take care of Ryan and he got little sleep – between the hourly breathing treatments, hourly vitals checks, Bennett throwing up all over Nate when they tried to give him some medicine, and them finally inserting an IV at 3am, it was a rough night. I stayed up there Sunday night so Nate could get some sleep before going to school on Monday and although I didn’t get a ton of sleep, it was way better.
Overall though, we felt like Bennett was well taken care of and they gave us some good information on how to hopefully keep it under control. Bennett was pretty brave through the whole thing – he wanted us to hold his hand when they were giving him the treatments or checking him, but after the first day & night, he seemed to be a pretty happy kid (he was lethargic all day Saturday) and had fun with the play-doh and Mr. Potato Heads the nurses brought him. When they first brought the play-doh he wanted me to make a ball and a basketball hoop and he spent hours shooting balls in the hoop. I thought he understood being sick and being at the hospital, but at one point I was filling out a survey and it said “does your child know why they are in the hospital” – so I asked Bennett, and he said “to shoot balls in the hoop”. Maybe he didn’t quite get it…
We were grateful for our visitors too – my sister & bro-in-law came to visit Saturday night, then brought us lunch and dinner on Sunday and Bryce helped Nate give Bennett a blessing. Nate’s mom drove all the way down on Sunday and helped entertain Bennett all afternoon. It was pretty sad to see little Bennett so sick and with tubes and monitors all over, but we’re grateful that he is doing better now and hopefully we can keep it under control! Here are a couple pics from the hospital (sorry – this turned into a long post!)
playing with grandma, and showing off his IV hand (he HATED the oxygen in his nose, but did surprisingly well with the IV).
