Jojo had slept through the night with no "crisis", just elevated resting heart rate. He woke up around 9:00 but refused to change his position or watch TV. Around 10:00 his heart rate began steadily going up and his O2 sat. level began going down to 95, 94, 93. I checked his temp and it was 102+. I rolled Jojo to the other side, but his O2 sat remained the same. He told me he needed a breathing treatment. I said we needed to do the cough assist first. So I took him off the bipap and his O2 sat and heart rate began going the opposite direction, towards the bad direction. As I did the cough assist his O2 sat kept dropping as low as 83% as his heart rate continued to go up to 170. All I could think of was the worst. I called for Brady to come home quickly (from duck hunting) as I turned up the oxygen and grabbed the breathing treatment. Tried the cough assist a couple more times, and by the time Brady got home, I finally had the breathing treatment going with 5liO2 and Jojo was just getting up to 94% O2 sat. Brady took over and we double-teamed taking care of Jojo. What a relief to have another set of hands in a moment of crisis.
Jojo was better for the rest of the day, but he continued to require a lot of treatments: vest with or without bipap, cough assist, postural drainage with chest tapping, breathing treatment, and of course oral/nasal suctioning. We also started him on Tamiflu, because of his temp. And he's been on antibiotics since yesterday. Did we jump the gun? We do whatever it takes to nip this illness in the bud. And after that crisis this morning, Jojo barely stopped talking. He recounted over and over what happened this morning. At one point he turned to me and said, "Mommy, you're not good at saving my life." To which I responded, "But honey, you're here alive, aren't you? I must be doing some good." I think he meant that I get nervous and panicky so easily. At one point, when I was frantically working on him before Brady came back, he said that we both needed to settle down. I was just happy to hear my bossy big boy was back.
