Lindsey's visit to Primary Children's

Monday Lindsey started to lose her voice. She went to bed that night feeling just fine. Around midnight she woke up with croupy cough and continued to worsen. Her breathing became very labored. We gave her an inhaler and she was able to calm down enough to sleep for a couple of hours. She woke up with trouble breathing and I took her into the doctor first thing. They gave her some decadron (a steriod). It takes about 6 hours to start working. We spent the day driving with the windows down, in the bathroom with a steamy shower, bundled up sitting outside on the porch. The normal things didn't seem to work. Aaron took her back to the doctor that night where they gave her another dose of decadron and they did a treatment of epinephrine. The doctor gave him a 50/50 chance that she would need to go to the ER during the night. Sure enough, the epinephrine wore off in a few hours and by midnight we decided to take her to the ER.



Aaron took Lindsey to Riverton hospital and they spent about three hours there. They did another round of decadron and epinephrine, and chest x-rays. They decided she needed to be admitted. Riverton Hospital is not equipped to handle this kind of pediatric case, so they transferred her by ambulance to Primary Children's. I called my sister at 2:30am and she came and slept at our house. I got to the hospital at the same time the ambulance arrived. This is a picture of her in the ambulance. Her "Girafey" never left her side throughout the whole ordeal.



Aaron was able to ride in the ambulance with Lindsey and I followed behind in our car. They had to give her oxygen during the last part of the ride. Lindsey was telling me later that it was really fast and really bumpy (hence, blurry picture).


From the ambulance she went straight into the Primary Children's Emergency Room. Here we should mention that nearly all doctors, nurses, paramedics, and others working in hospitals are amazing, those working the night shift even more so, and those at Primary Children's... well its hard to describe but there is something very special about the people and environment there. Among the many skilled and compassionate professionals in the ER, one respiratory tech with colorful tatoos up both arms, a shaved head (which is always scary), and a patch of beard was so kind and caring that he managed to educate us on what was going on, get us to actually smile and get Lindsey relaxed enough to drift off to sleep.


In the ER they debated about whether to send her straight to the ICU or admit her to a regular room. Eventually they chose the latter and she finally made it to her room around 7:00am. She was exhausted but refused to sleep. This was two nights in a row for her to have little sleep. She wouldn't eat anything. The epinephrine was the only thing that improved her breathing, though it didn't get her to the point that the breathing wasn't still rough and it didnt last that long. But having the equivalent of several long bursts of adrenaline really messes with your sleep and your appetite.



The doctors orders were that she could have the epinephrine every three hours. The treatments seemed to start out wearing off at about three hours but it quickly started wearing off much quicker. Soon it was only lasting 30 minutes. Then it wasn't really helping much at all. This is when they decided to move her to the Pediatric ICU (PICU). Two nurses and a doctor wheeled her bed to the elevator and down one level with Aaron carrying the stuff alongside. Arriving at the PICU was a little dramatic. Upon entering, a nurse paged a team to meet her bed arriving in the room. Because they didn't know what she had and how contagious it was, everyone wore gloves, masks and gowns. Within a few seconds of arriving in the room at the PICU there were 6 or 7 doctors and nurses swarming around her. The nurse from upstairs was giving the rundown to the attending and a small team while 2 were hooking her up to machines, taking her vitals and generally assessing her. Another ran out for the respiratory tech and quickly came back with a tank of heliox - a mixture of helium and oxygen that they put on her with a mask right away. The helium is much lighter than oxygen so it can carry the oxygen into the lungs a lot easier. They gave her another dose of the decadron. They also started her on an I.V. antibiotic because they were thinking it had to be more than just the normal virus that was causing all the problems.


She didn't immediately respond to the heliox so they did another round of the epinephrine treatment and generally seemed very on guard about her condition. They did a good job of not panicking us, but they did tell us that they were going to try to move her to another bed in the PICU that was closer to the central nurses area in case they needed to act quickly. They thought they might quickly have to intubate her and put her on a respirator. If this had happened they would have had to sedate her and have machines breathe for her, possibly for days.


However, we were very blessed and it was at this point that things started to improve. She started to relax and the heliox (or one of the other treatments - hard to say which) seemed to start helping. It wasn't a dramatic turnaround at first but she stabilized and then started to improve a little. She was able to fall asleep and they decided not to move her. Aaron and I were both in the room with her that night - taking turns sitting by her side for a few hours while the other one tried to sleep on a fold-out chair behind her bed.


During the night they took a sample of her mucus (imagine having a small suction tube fed into your nose) to test and determine what, if any, virus she did have. The nurses also had to keep waking her up every hour to check her vital signs and give her Ibuprofen or Tylenol. They were trying to keep her fever down, because every time her fever spiked, it would mess with her breathing. She had to keep the heliox mask on the entire night. She kept waking up very disoriented trying to figure out why there was a mask on her. She hated that mask. But between all of those interruption she slept relatively well.


By the morning they had determined that she had human metapneumovirus which has many of the same effects as RSV. Knowing which virus caused it, didn't really change any of the treatment, but it did confirm that they were doing the right things. When the doctors did rounds about 10:30 on Thursday morning she had improved enough to take her off the heliox, which she was happy about. She continued to improve throughout the day on Thursday. One of the hardest things was that they ask the parents to leave the PICU between 7 and 8 am and pm each day while they change shifts so that the doctors and nurses can update each oncoming shift very openly. We hated leaving her, even though the nurses were very attentive. When we came back in the room she was understandably scared.


By Thursday afternoon she was well enough that she wanted to call and talk to her sisters and brother on the phone. The kids loved this, and Lindsey really enjoyed being on the phone and telling them everything that was going on and how she could order a strawberry smoothie any time she wanted (though she didn't eat or drink much the whole time).



Aaron spent the night at the hospital with her on Thursday and it went pretty smoothly. In fact, they would have moved her out of the PICU to a regular room but they didn't have any empty beds in the hospital.


Friday morning they told us that she could go home if she started drinking enough to get fluids moving through her. They unplugged her from her I.V. and by this time she was comfortable adjusting her own hospital bed and unplugging all of her wires so she could go to the bathroom and then plugging herself back in again when she returned to bed. She took the challenge and downed a juice box of gatorade, a little more strawberry smoothie and even ordered Rice Krispies and drank the milk with a straw. She was motivated to get out of that hospital.

By about 11am they had all the paperwork done for Lindsey to come home. She got to ride out in a wheelchair wearing a mask. She was very happy to come home.

Aaron's work sent flowers to Lindsey, Cassidy and Whitney. We are very blessed that he works for such a great company that allowed him three days off this week. I couldn't have done it without him.

We wouldn't have been able to get through this without all the love, support and prayers by those who love us. I owe my sister big time. Not only did I wake her up in the middle of the night, but she kept my kids most of that day, she picked up some groceries for us, she made dinner for our family, she gave us a bag full of snacks to have at the hospital, she had presents for Lindsey with cards from each of her kids, she watched Grant & Cassidy another time while I went to pick Lindsey up from the hosptial, she picked up a prescription for me for Grant Saturday because I didn't dare leave Lindsey. (Grant has an ear infection.) Both Grandma's have been amazing in helping us. Staying with the kids and helping with homework, dinners, laundry, baths, bedtime, getting them ready for school etc. My sister-in-law, Laura also watched our kids for us. From what I hear, Cassidy was eating the entire time she was there. That girl can eat. My friend Angela picked Whitney and Cassidy up from school and took over for a brunch that I was supposed to host on Friday for Tamsen. So many people were there to help us so that we didn't have to worry and could focus on helping Lindsey get better. Thank you everyone. We love you.

I know that many prayers were said on behalf of Lindsey and our family. We felt the power from those prayers. We testify that it is true what the scriptures say: "...pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous [woman or] man availeth much." - James 5:16

I know that we were watched over and blessed. I look back at some events over the last few weeks, and I know that the Lord has been guiding us. One event in particular is when I took Whitney to the doctor for strep. For some reason I decided to take all four of my kids with me. My sister could have worked it out to watch them, but I decided to take them. When I got to the doctor they asked me if I wanted to get them the H1N1 vacination while I was there. Aaron and I had previously talked about it and decided not to go and get the vacine. For some reason I felt like I needed to get my kids immunized that day, so I did. If I didn't have all my kids with me at the time, I probably wouldn't have bothered. I really feel that if Lindsey had picked up the H1N1 virus while we were at the hospital it would have killed her. She was so weak that her body would not have been able to fight it.

Aaron and Laine gave Lindsey a blessing the night before she went to the hospital. She was told that her body would heal from this, that it would take a few days, but that she would heal. That blessing gave me such peace throughout this whole ordeal. I never felt overly worried or upset. I felt very peaceful that she would heal from this and that she would be alright. I did have one breakdown moment, but I blame that on pure exhaustion.

We walk away from this experience with a new appreciation for many things.

• Our bed and a full night sleep!
• Our overall good health
• So many friends and family close by.
• Aaron's job.
• Health insurance - if you're going to hit your maxium out of pocket expenses in a year you just as well do it the first week in January.
• Having such an amazing children's hospital close by. Angels and miracles abound there. Although it takes 45 minutes from here, so many people travel from different states to take their children there.
• The power of the priesthood and an understanding of gospel truth in our lives.
• A loving Heavenly Father who hears and answers our prayers in personal and powerful ways.
• Our kids!

Thank you everyone for your prayers and your acts of service.