ER Visit

First of all, everything is fine with Clayton. We've been extremely lucky with his health. We've only had two emergency room visits before this. Some other HLHS children we know seem to end up in the ER all the time. Clayton has had a little runny nose the past couple days. He woke up at about 1am screaming and wheezing really badly. After about a half hour the wheezing had not improved, and he had thrown up a lot of mucus. Kids like Clayton can deteriorate quite quickly with respiratory problems, so we were concerned. Clayton cannot take any kind of decongestant or use anything like Vicks, so we decided to head to the ER. I really wanted to go with him, but I also knew Eli would need to be fed, and I didn't want Eli in the ER during RSV season with all the germy kids (mine included). We decided Ryan would wait in the car with Eli and we'd switch when Eli needed to be fed. It was about 20 degrees last night, so we knew that would be interesting.

By the time we got there, Clayton was much improved, of course. They put us in an isolation room, due to Clayton's heart, so we didn't have to wait with everyone else. They said it wouldn't be too long. That was at 2:30am. We were finally seen at 5:30am. Eli slept in the car with Ryan until just about that time. Ryan said he'd turn on the car, heat it up, and then turn it off until it got too cool. We had Eli really bundled, and I was actually more concerned he'd overheat than freeze. When we were finally seen, Clayton was fine. His lungs were clear, he still had the runny nose, but he was just fine. We think his throat was pretty sore, and he may have inhaled a little of that drainage, causing him to panic and wheeze.

In some ways it seemed like a waste, but the doctors were very concerned and gave him a full exam. They take HLHS very seriously down at Children's, which I appreciate. We chose to move here based heavily on the fact that Children's has experience with HLHS. Trying to keep Clayton entertained in the middle of the night in the ER was not a fun experience, but in the end we're really glad everything turned out okay. We'll see how tonight goes.