Thursday, April 1, 2010

Searching for eggs? Not hardly.

There are a lot of posts on local parenting message boards about various local public Easter egg hunts. Some parents have actually scheduled things so that their children can go to more than one.

Although Easter isn't a holiday we generally celebrate, egg hunts could be fun. Theoretically, at least.

If they didn't involve so many people, all in one spot, right at the end of RSV season.

Maybe we're paranoid, but last year, RSV and Acorn were a bad fit. He spent 3 days in the PICU, went home for 4 days, and we went back for another three days, this time via ambulance (full lights and sirens, running red lights), at 8 liters of oxygen, which, with the ventilator, was still only getting him to an oxygen saturation in the 82% range.

When you call 911 and say baby with breathing difficulties, they don't hear anything else - it's probably good they didn't realize he was on a ventilator, or the whole police and fire dept would have shown up.

You know you've spent too much time in hospitals when the critical care ambulance crew comes to a dead halt upon looking in your child's doorway. We have about as much equipment as they do.

You know things are bad when they ask their questions and say, "well, let's just take him, because there's nothing else we can do."

And it's hard not to fall on the floor laughing when the EMT-in-training asks if you're a doctor....or the look on his face when you say no, just after the actual EMT on the ambulance is calling the ER and says, "well, mom had already done everything we would have, and more, so we figured we'd scoop and run and let you guys sort it out when we get there."

Another little guy we know with a trach had an even worse experience with RSV this past month, including the threat of life-flighting him to a larger hospital.

Yes, we leave the house. Last year, we left more than was probably wise. But we're cautious.

We avoid crowds - particualrly indoors. We avoid putting Acorn in situations where others will be sneezing or coughing on him. We got Synagis (an RSV antibody) shots approved this year.

And yes, we're going to get him out this spring and summer (including to a weekly nursery school for the next couple of months)....but we're taking our gallon jug of hand sanitizer.

But there's no way I'm putting him in the midst of a crowd of crazy parents and their kids, to get run over and sneezed on, where he'll be handling eggs that who knows how many people have handled.

Not this year. Not with how far we've come since that last ambulance ride. There's too much to lose.

2 comments:

  1. I don't blame you. My DD is on immunosuppresant drugs and we won't be doing the easter egg hunts either (not counting the one here). If we did, we'd right back at the hospital too. Something I hope to never see the inside of again. Good luck with everything.

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  2. I don't blame you. My DD is on immunosuppresant drugs and we won't be doing the easter egg hunts either (not counting the one here). If we did, we'd right back at the hospital too. Something I hope to never see the inside of again. Good luck with everything.

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