Thursday, January 20, 2011

Aspirations

And no, I'm not referring to my dreams for the future.

Last night we found ourselves in the ER. M aspirated during her evening medications and bottle feeding. This is her second aspiration in less than a month - suspicious. It was a particularly frightening incident, she went nearly a minute without being able to cry, move air, cough or do anything but lay stiff, looking totally panicked. She then began the coughing, vomiting, crying cycle. She improved over the next 1/2 hour, but the after hours nurse talked to the peds on-call doc who wanted her to be seen in ER due to "her complex medical picture." I can appreciate that so we made the 1 hour trip to the hospital.

I'm always amazed by our great facility. It is a University hospital - a teaching facility with a contant influx of new faces - med students and residents rotating through. Still, no matter when we go or where we go we are always greeted like we're old friends. Mind you, we've only been through this ER three times - that's it! Most of our admissions have been through the clinic. Still, last night there were nurses who remembered us, a Child Life specialist who helped us out last time when E was along, and the very same Pediatric ER doc that was on the last 2 times we were there. You wouldn't expect such a down home community feeling at a facility like this one, but we always get it.

Anyway, we were in and out in under 2 hours - a record, I think. M looks good, no obvious problems. We most likely need to follow up with a swallow study, however. I'm hoping this is just an intermittent issue related to her three recent surgeries and not something more.

4 comments:

Michelle said...

Poor little girl....sounds like a swallow study is in your future! How scary!

China Dreams said...

Hope it doesn't happen again, but two hours in and out is faster than I sometimes spend at the hospital for minor things, so that's definitely good service!

Ruby

Kimberly said...

Oh my goodness - your little angel can't catch a break! Sounds like it was so scary! Glad to hear you had such a positive experience at the ER....praying for no more visits.

janiece said...

I have to say that the time I took Julia to the ER made me love my hospital even more. I know both of the child life people in the ER and they are awesome. I'd be willing to bet it was Dr. Kim at the ER