One Year Anniversary Post Hospitalization

It's been ONE year since my precious baby almost died from a mysterous ailment that no one figured out what was going on.  She was born prematurely and was in the PICU for over a week and never had another issue until a couple of weeks post vaccinations.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, she developed asthma per the ER doctors.  We went on a roller coaster with the Army hospital until she crashed hard and was taken to the local children's hospital.  They ran test after test but to no avail.  However, she became healthy again and thankfully as my husband was in Iraq at that time. 

After his return, we took her trick or treating and she developed a cold.  It all went downhill fast after that.  The Army hospital didn't know how to tend to her as they didn't even have a pediatrician at the entire facility.  After HOURS spent, they finally had to take her to a children's hospital over two hours away in Savannah.  Luckily for us, we had the most amazing ER doctor ever and she owes her life to him.  The Army hospital and local children's staff who accompanied us to the other children's hospital (the local was full), saturated her heart and lungs with IV fluid to try to get her heart rate down from too much albuterol.  Her lungs started to collapse but they were able to resolve the heart saturation with no long term effects.

They ended up intubating her and it was touch and go.  Numerous specialists were called in and after many procedures, a swollen baby, she finally came out of it much to my sheer delight and joy.  It was a very trying moment as I had my then five year old at home still adjusting to her very new epilepsy that came out of nowhere within two weeks of the asthma for my then one year old.  This is sounding confusing now!

After a very long, drawn out story, I'm happy to say that she has not been in the hospital since February of 2009 and I've finally been able to treat her without crashing thanks to the wonderful doctors at the local children's hospital.  She started to croup two day's ago and my heart sank with fear.  I started the albuterol regularly on top of her twice a day Flovent and once a day Singulair and luckily it's passing ... shew!

Now if I can only keep away the flu and H1N1!