First ER Visit

Well... Colton had his first visit to the ER the Monday before Christmas. He tested positive for RSV in November and began breathing treatments the beginning of December. We went to the doctor, it seemed on a weekly basis checking on him.

The Monday before Christmas we were back at Dr. Kisch's office and he was still wheezing even after the breathing treatments. They gave him an oxygen saturation test in the office and it came back as 85% which is very low, they want it to be 98%+. The machine was new so they tried it a few times but they did not like that it was coming back so low. Dr. Kisch said that we have a choice of either admitting him to the hospital so they could monitor him and give him breathing treatments. Or go to the ER and check his saturation level and give him a chest X-Ray and we would then make a decision based on the test results.

We chose to go to the ER and see what the results were. His oxygen saturation came back around 95%. They sucked his nose and cleared his lungs from all of the congestion he had. We had the X-Ray and it came back with the beginning stages of pneumonia. Dr. Kisch started him on amoxicillin and continued the breathing treatments with an additional steroid we would give him through his nebulizer.

We are very thankful that we were able to catch the pneumonia in time where it did not get severe. Although his wheezing did get pretty bad we were on top of giving him breathing treatments every 4 hours. Dr. Kisch said that Colton was one of her worst RSV cases and she was very concerned about him and thought about us often. She always mentioned that she loved that he still smiled and that he was not overly fussy considering how sick he was. Cody and I have been very happy with Dr. Kisch and the nurses in her office. They are very knowledgeable and genuinely care about us and Colton's health.

Dr. Kisch wanted him sleeping in an upright position to help with his congestion. For a couple months he slept in his swing in our room. Every night Cody and I would bolt upright in bed when he was coughing to make sure he was ok, this happened many times a night.

He struggled at first with his breathing treatments but he finally realized that they do help him breathe better. Cody was so good and always made it a game when he would give him his treatment. He made sound effects and pretended like he was flying through the clouds. He likes to hold onto the mask or the cord now and will usually fall asleep during the treatments.