Joe update

I realize its been nearly a month since Ive updated this blog. We've been a tad busy. We celebrated Christmas later this year and I have plenty of pictures to post at a late date.

Some of you may already know this, but some may not. Joe has had reactive airway disease (RAD) which is the medical term for a kid who will likely have asthma later in life, but may grow out of it. They can't officially diagnose someone with asthma until after the age of 2. Joe started wheezing and having labored breathing on Tuesday. We started our nebulizer breathing treatments at home, but we couldn't ever get his breathing back to normal. We went to our PCP and got it under a little control on Wednesday, but then on Thursday, it was back to wheezing and labored breathing. Thursday afternoon we headed to the ER at a local hospital to see if they could help us. They tried for 4 hours, but just couldn't get him back on track after several breathing treatments...including an hour long one--a VERY long hour-- try keeping a mask on a toddler for an hour, who never slowed down once during this episode...so they transported us to Children's in Dallas (yes, Joe and myself got to go on our first ambulance ride together!). Another 4 hours spent in the Children's Asthma ER and another hour long breathing treatment that didn't see to help, and we were admitted to the hospital about 130am Friday morning. We were 1st supposed to be in for only 23hr observation but after Joe wasn't responding that well to their every 2 hour breathing treatments, we were fully admitted. We expected to be there 1 more night, but Friday night Joe started requiring oxygen while sleeping because his oxygen saturation was below the level they felt comfortable with. They also did a culture and found Joe to be RSV +, so he was confined to his room the entire time we were there. We eventually were able to space out his breathing treatments to every 6 hours today and he didn't require oxygen last night, so they discharged us home.

We want to thank everyone for their thoughts, prayers, phone calls and meals while we were in the hospital. I know I'm biased, but Joe did amazing through the entire ER visits and hospitalization. I know he is excited about being home and so am I! I was reminded multiple times while we were in the hospital that it could be a lot worse and many parents have more serious illnesses to deal with, so I'm grateful that Joe is a healthy toddler and we now have a daily med to keep his RAD more under control.

I'll post more Christmas pictures later...I have a LOT of laundry to do now.