Grant's Pneumonia

Grant has been sick for several days now. The first signs of illness was on Lindsey's birthday. He threw up when we were at Chuck-a-Rama. We didn't think much of it because, well, we were eating at Chuck-a-Rama. It makes anyone want to throw up. The next morning he had a low grade fever so I kept him home from school. By afternoon he was fine and playing as normal. Thursday in the middle of the night his fever went up to 104 degrees. He had a fever of 105 to 101 for the next several days. I've since learned that Tylenol or Ibuprofen will only take a fever down 2 or 3 degrees, which would explain why we never really got rid of the fever.

By Saturday morning after another very long night we decided to take him to Insta Care. He was tested for Strep and for a Urinary Tract Infection, both of which came back normal. The doctor said that if he wasn't improved in a few days to have him seen again. Laine came over between sessions of General Conference and helped Aaron give Grant a blessing.

Tuesday morning he was still having the high fevers and throwing up but now his breathing seemed really labored. I took him into his pediatrician that morning and she suspected pneumonia. She ordered a chest xray for him. His blood oxygen levels were in the normal range, otherwise she would have sent us straight to Primary Children's Hospital. They gave him a shot of a really strong antibiotic to kick start the healing processes. I went straight from the doc's office to Riverton Hospital to have the chest xray done. The results came back with a pretty serious case of pneumonia. Since his oxygen levels were good, the doctor told us to monitor him at home and if we saw any signs of trouble breathing to bring him back to the doctor or to the ER.

Since we were now at 5 nights of little sleep we decided to take shifts that night. I had the 9:30 pm - 2:00 am shift. Aaron went to bed early so that he could get some sleep. Around 1:45 am Grant woke up shaking and his heart was beating so fast and hard. You could feel it pounding in his chest. We decided to have Aaron take him to the ER. The doctors in the ER said he needed to be admitted and to plan on having him there for several days. (Of course I couldn't get to sleep after they left because I was so worried about him, so I had another night of 2 hours of sleep). We spent the next two days taking shifts at the hospital. We owe a great deal of thanks to Grandma Roberts, Heidi and Katie for watching the girls for us so we could focus on being there with Grant. We had a few of our neighbors bring dinner over to us one night which was very helpful.

Grant improved a lot after he was on oxygen. He wasn't working as hard to breathe and we saw big improvements. He was able to come off the IV on the first day, but he had to go back on the oxygen when he fell asleep because his numbers dropped too low. By Thursday he was off of oxygen even during his naps. This is a picture taken of him a few hours before we were released to go home. The Child Life Specialist brought in a mat for him to play on and lots of fun things to do. He is playing with play dough in this picture. He was very happy to be out of that bed!

We were able to bring him home late Thursday night (it was 10:30pm before we got home.) This was a much shorter stay than what the doctors had expected. We are so grateful that there is a Primary Children's Hospital extension so close to our home. The quality of care is the same as at the main hospital. All the doctors and nurses were so great with Grant. There were not a lot of children there so he received lots of love and attention.

Grant is getting back to normal. He is playing with his sisters and happy. He does have less energy and will have sudden coughing attacks that really hurt and he has to lie down for awhile afterwards. Each day is better than the previous. The doctors say that he will have a few more days of being sick and it will take around 3 weeks to be completely rid of the cough and back up to full energy.

Since Grant had his surgery back in December he has become a snorer. He snores so loud that you can hear him anywhere upstairs. One of the things I noticed before we knew that he had pneumonia was that he wasn't snoring. When I went and checked on Grant a few minutes ago he was snoring away. This is the first time since he developed pneumonia that he has been snoring again. I never thought I would be grateful to hear him snore. Yeah!