"How long has she been breathing like this?"
blink. blink. blank stare.
Um, like what?
The doctor points out that Brooke's breathing is very labored. She is struggling with each breath. She has another cold that just started a few days prior and apparently this one is a bit different than the last one. The doctor checked some of Brookes stats and listened to her lungs and decided that we needed to to take her to the local children's hospital to get checked out.
So a diaper rash turned into a visit to the ER.
At the hospital they did the same checks, and werent too thrilled with what they were seeing. A couple of attempts were made to get her oxygen levels up and wheezing down, but the triage people didnt feel that enough of an impact was made.
So an ER visit turned into a hospital stay.
Luckily, our stay was only about 24 hours and we were released today, on Christmas Eve. Brooke wasnt a big fan of all of the poking, prodding, or treatments ... but seemed to accept it. I have a feeling that the fact that she was the center of attention of numerous people made up for some of the negatives. When we were getting admitted she was given a holiday teddy bear. After some chest x-rays the tech gave her another teddy bear. While we were there, some "elves" came and gave her some Christmas presents. She got to sit in bed and watch Shrek (THREE TIMES). Food was delivered to her as she commanded. Everyone jumped to her call. When it was time to leave, Brooke refused to put on her coat or shoes. She told me she wanted to stay.
I sincerely want to thank all of those wonderful people for giving her that kind of experience. Knowing that she actually was willing to stay in the hospital even after she was feeling better gives you a little glimpse of the level of service we received.
Here she is after we were discharged, while waiting for Daddy to come pick us up. She was a pretty sick kid, but you can tell from the smile on her face that life was still pretty good!
