Noah's quick trip to hospital

I knew it would happen! Last week we saw Dr Bailey and we were commenting on how long it has been since Noah had been in hospital. We then joked and said that we will probably be in next week now. It always seems to work out that whenever I say it has been a long time since Noah has been really sick that we are in hospital soon afterwards.

Last year Noah got his tonsils and adenoids removed. It helped him a lot - he could sleep and breath a lot better and so could I - as the snoring had stopped. Over the past month or so the snoring has started up again - even worse than before. I took him to see Dr Bailey and he said that it is possible that his adenoids are growing back already, or that he has sinusitis.

He said he could put him on antibiotics but both agreed that it would be best to try something else first as we try to avoid them as much or as long as we can as it always upsets things and causes thrush etc. He decided to put him on rhinocort spray first to see if that helps. It did help for a few days but then two nights ago his breathing got REALLY bad during the night. I kept changing his position all night to try to get his breathing to settle and the snoring to stop but nothing would work. The next morning it settled down so I sent him to school.

After school last night it got really bad again - he was breathing really fast - about 60 breaths per minute. I couldn't figure out why it would be so bad as he didn't seem like he had a chest infection (I'm pretty good at diagnosing those now if I do say so myself!). I also tested his urine a couple of days before to see if anything showed up but it was also clear. He stayed home from school on Monday (only the second day this year that he has had to stay home from school!) as he was crying a lot, and I had thought then that maybe he had a UTI.

At about 8.30 pm last night his breathing was pretty fast and I started to pack our bags and meds ready for hospital. I put him on the floor for a sec to get him ready and having him laying flat down on his back seemed to settle things down a bit. We decided to go to bed to see if things would settle and at 12.45am I woke up to Noah vomitting in bed. When I went to check him he was VERY hot - his temp is usually 35.5 normally but he felt way hotter than that. I didn't even check to see what it was as I knew it was up.

Aaron got him ready to go to hospital and gave him some panadol while I finished packing the bag - thinking we would be in hospital for the next week. When I arrived at Accident and Emergency there was no one in the waiting room. We went straight in and they checked his temperature which was 38.6 - very high for Noah. His sats were at 91 and his resps were up to 60 per minute.

After about 45 minutes the panadol started to kick in and his breathing started to settle down a little. One Dr came and listened to his chest and said he heard a few wheezes and gave him a neb of ventolin. Afterwards he said he couldn't hear anymore wheezes which was good and I thought that he must have had a chest infection even though I couldn't tell.

Another Dr came in and asked me for the whole story over again. She had his file and said 'he has quite a big file hey?' and I laughed and told her that was his third file! She kept asking me funny questions about whether he has cerebral palsy (pretty obvious you would think with a wheelchair sitting next to the bed!) and obviously had no idea what hydranencephaly is and either did the other Dr as he kept asking me how he got hydrocephalus and I had to explain to him it was different, but he didn't seem to get it.

She then started to explain to me that if you have an infection somewhere it can cause the temperature to go up and it could be in his urine. Duh! She obviously doesn't know us very well and must deal with some idiots but she quickly realised that I knew what I was doing and stopped treating me like I didn't know anything. She asked me sympathetically if Noah was my only child and was suprised when I told her he was in the middle.

She checked his ears and throat and said everything looked fine. They were very impressed that I was able to get a urine sample from him so fast and discovered that the glucose levels in his urine were up a little but it wasn't showing anything else up, so there was no major infection. The nurse then came to check his blood sugar levels with a finger prick and said it was normal which was good. They later decided that the glucose levels in his urine weren't significant enough to worry about.

So first of all it went from a chest infection, then diabeties and then they and I had no idea except that maybe it was just the sinus problems still.

His temp continued going down till it was almost back to normal, which also settled the breathing down. The Drs finally agreed that they thought it was a sinus infection and asked me if I wanted to wait around until about 8am which is usually when Dr Bailey started his shift at the hospital. I said I didn't as I knew it would be lunch time until we saw him and he would probably have just decided the same thing as they did.

They gave us some oral antibiotics and said we could go home. We got home at 5am this morning and Noah is still sleeping now. His breathing is still not great, but a lot better than before. Hopefully the antibiotics will kick in fast and it is what is needed. He is missing out on plain clothes day at school today which was actually to raise money for the kids ward at the hospital.

It was the fastest trip to hospital for Noah ever! We won't even count it as a hospital trip as we weren't admitted. Hopefully now we can stay away for another 2 years.