A Little Visit to the ER

5.4.2012

So we hadn't had Paige home 24 hours...or even 12, before she made her first trip to the ER.  Before we left the hospital we had a few different nurses comment on Paige's weird breathing, so they ran a bunch of tests, which all said nothing was wrong.  Then we went to check out of the hospital and our nurse who walked out to the car with us mentioned it again of how odd her breathing patterns were, and if she hadn't just looked at her labs that she would be really concerned. 

Well, we picked Hallie up from Grandma and Grandpa's, then headed home, and bedtime rolled around.  We did the standard bath for Hallie, jammies, stories, scriptures, prayers, etc.  But during this both Eric and I had noticed that her breathing was continuing to get more and more abnormal.  We put Hallie to bed and continued to watch it.  Within 10 minutes of Hallie heading to bed, we got her back up and headed to InstaCare, which is only about two blocks away.  Unfortunately they had just closed, so we had to head to the Orem InstaCare.  On the whole drive there Hallie was so very sweet, she kept telling us, "Paige is okay, Mommy Paige is okay." It still makes me tear up to think of how much she immediately loved her baby sister, and knew that everything would be okay.  Not to mention the peace it brought to my heart.  What an amazing little angel of a girl we have. 

Since we were headed out to North Orem anyway, we decided to drop Hallie off at Chad and Angela's, thinking we would only be a little while and that Hallie would be much happier there. (Who wouldn't be? :) ) We quickly dropped her off then into InstaCare we went.  They did a quick triage check, and her oxygen levels were quite low, and they recommended going to the ER in Provo.  So back we went to Provo, dreading the visit to the ER.

We were checked in quickly, and taken back into a room, where we were left to wait.  The doctor sent nurses in to do vitals, and everything looked fine, and her oxygen levels were back where they should be...of course.

 Then we waited some more, and then they sent in a x-ray tech who did a chest x-ray to make sure she didn't have fluid in her lungs...everything came back normal.

 They tested her oxygen again and it was semi-fluctuating, but not enough to be concerned.  But then she finally started breathing funny again, and the nurse grabbed the doctor who came in and watch her breathe.  He was not the most helpful of people, and just said it's not causing any problems, so she is fine.  Definitely not what we wanted to hear.  Which we told him.  Then he proceeded to tell us that every kid is different, and that we were just overreacting, then handed us a paper that he had printed from about.com about periodic breathing of the infant and told us to go home.  Needless to say we weren't exactly happy with him.  But after being there until close to 2 am, we headed home without knowing much more than we did when we went.  (After talking with our pediatrician, it was periodic breathing, which we believed, we were just incredibly frustrated with how the ER doctor handled it.)

Because it was so late Angela and Chad just kept Hallie for the night (what amazing friends we have!), and we went and picked her up the next morning.  Even though we were all exhausted, I was ready to have our little family all at home.  So we visited for a bit, and Hallie held her sister for a little while, then we headed home. Finally.

Hallie and Paige at Chad & Angela's house after a long night at the ER