On Nov. 11th Sophia developed a cough. The next day it was a little better and on Thursday it was bad again. Plus, she was not moving the air in her lungs well. I called the doctor and she wrote out a prescription for a steroid. We tried the steroid and she still wasn't that much better. She would cough, desat, and we would give her more oxygen. It took minutes before she was "stable". On Friday I left to pick Scarlett up from school. When I got home, her nurse met me at the door and said "Sophia's doing that thing again." Both of us bolted up the stairs to her room and Sophia was clearly in respiratory distress. I gave her all of the oxygen we could and I told the nurse to pack up because we're going to the hospital. Afraid that I would eventually run out of oxygen, I used what we had left to get her to the hospital...after I drop the kids off at a friends house because I knew we would be there for a few hours.
We arrived at the hospital and it was organized chaos. I was so glad that several people that knew and love Sophia were floating that day because if I has to repeat her history one more time... Anyway, the first thing they did was change her trach.
See that brown/green/yellow stuff in her trach? That's not suppose to be there. In fact, it is suppose to be clear like the rest of her trach.
Sophia was so mad and nothing I did would calm her down. To be fair, if I couldn't breathe I would be pretty mad, too. Anyway, everyone tried to soothe her and nothing was working. Jeremiah called me and said that he was in the ER and was trying to get to us. In the meantime, I told Sophia that daddy was coming and he would make her feel all better. And you know what? He did! He got there and she was all smiles and the staff couldn't believe it! What can I say. Jeremiah loves his girls and his girls love him.
Is she sticking her tongue out at me or is it the timing of the shot? Let's go with the latter. However, I'm beginning to wonder if she associates me with pain. I'm always there at her worst and I'm the one that always get her help. And this is how she treats me??? Shameful!
If she could talk, I bet she was saying "I'm in the hospital?! Again?!"
After seeing the error of her ways, she asked me for my forgiveness. Forgiveness was granted :o)
We were in the ER for about two hours and then she was admitted to PICU. After several labs, tests, and an x-ray, it was determined that she caught a virus and had a bacterial infection at her trach site. The viral infection is what did her in. Because her lungs are so sensitive and so compromised, she can't fight things off the way that we can with "normal" lungs. Over the next couple of days she got better and was suppose to come home on the 18th. As I'm pulling into the hospital parking garage, the nurse practitioner called me. Sophia crashed and burned a little bit and wasn't able to come home. We had to wait another day. On Nov. 19th, baby girl came home and has been doing okay.
