Bronchiolitis Hit Us HARD

If you follow along with me on Instagram or Facebook (if you don’t, you should!), you know that Emmy has been really sick the last couple of weeks. The poor thing just can’t seem to catch a break.

It started with sudden fevers that kept spiking higher for a few days, which turned out to be from double ear infections + possible strep throat. They don’t test strep throat in kids as young as Emmy, 18 months, but since strep had been going around our house + she had a red throat, it was a safe bet. Luckily, the course of antibiotics for the ear infections would knock anything out anyway.

The next few days she still seemed to be going downhill. Snot was running down her face 24/7 (kids are gross), then a cough started that started to worry me. I heard wheezing with every breath + suddenly she was breathing a lot faster.

I took her back to the pediatrician because even though she was on day 6 of the antibiotic, something just felt off.

I was right.

Emmy now had bronchiolitis. She was wheezing + retracting with each breath, with a respiratory rate in the mid 40s. Our pediatrician sent us home for a few hours to rest and then asked us to come back to see how she was doing. Nothing was getting better, even after trying a breathing treatment, so he sent us over to the Children’s Hospital ER.

At the ER, the doctor on call completely disagreed with our ped’s assessment. He said he saw no retractions (there definitely were retractions), he heard no wheezing and said it was all just some mucus causing “noisy breathing”. Emmy’s oxygen levels had been pretty good in the mid 90s, so they suctioned her nose with a Nose Frida and sent us on our way.

The next day, we went back to the pediatrician for a follow up. Our normal doc was out of the office, so we saw our secondary doc. He heard wheezing. He saw retractions. He sent us home to monitor her closely and asked us to come back the next morning. After going home that evening, she seemed to get worse. Her respiratory rate was in the mid 50s, but our doc said go back to the ER if she gets to 60 breaths a minute. We put her in a bath to calm her down and then put her down for the night, checking her breathing every few hours.

The next morning was a Saturday. Thankfully the doctor’s office has Saturday hours, so we went back. Emmy’s respiratory rate was at 60 when we checked in, but slowed eventually to about 48. Still high though. They monitored her for about an hour and 20 minutes, and eventually sent us back home to continue monitoring.

Sunday morning the doc called to check on us. Emmy was basically the same with a resting respiratory rate in the mid 40s. Plus she was now dehydrated. The consensus was that she had been working too hard to breathe for too long and we should take her back to the ER with demands to be put on oxygen. The idea is that it would give her some extra air to take the pressure off of her body from working so hard.

Back to the ER we went. 11 hours later, we came home with an oxygen tank in tow. Emmy has been doing surprisingly well with the oxygen + even leaves in the tubes most of the time.

We have another few days on the oxygen but hopefully we are over the worst of it now and she can really start getting better. I’m told bronchiolitis can last 2-3 weeks, but the first 3-5 days are the worst. It’s been a whirlwind the last week, but I’m so thankful that we have such an amazing team of doctors watching out for her. They have called to check in with us every single day. (If you are in the Denver metro area, send me a message + I’ll give you their info!)