Breathe Deep

 


Well, it's been a long week. And we're not out of the woods yet. Berkeley is still hanging out at Children's Medical Center in Dallas. She's becoming quite a celebrity, getting to know just about every doctor, nurse, and respiratory technician in the pediatrics wing of the hospital. She and I have outlasted several shifts of doctors and nurses and now she's working on the weekend crew with her mom. I'm taking a break and sleeping at home for a night or two while Julie gets to spend some more time with Berkeley.

Monday night when we went in, I told Berkeley that there were cheaper ways to get a daddy/daughter date. Yesterday, I told her she's bumped that up to a daddy/daughter vacation. The good news is that there's a reasonable chance her upcoming heart surgery could be totally free. We might tap out our insurance deductible this week instead. Heh.

But everyone really wants to know how she's doing. The short answer is she's doing pretty well actually. The antibiotics have been very effective in dealing with her pneumonia (it's more fun to say if you don't make the P silent). Everyone that's checked her out over the past three days has commented that her lungs and airways are sounding much better, and x-rays of her lungs confirm all of that. The one issue that's keeping her in the hospital is her breathing. She is simply not getting enough oxygen saturation in her blood. She's been hooked up on an oxygen tube since Monday night, and we just can't seem to get her to level out and breathe well enough on her own to totally come off of the oxygen yet. When she finally does come off of the oxygen and is stablized on her own, she'll still have to go through a 24-hour observation period before they send her home.

So what originally looked like a quick trip to the referral care clinic on Monday evening and then turned into a slumber party that we thought would end the next day has managed to stretch on for a week now. They're trying a new breathing treatment on her as of yesterday evening. I went online and read a 6 page journal entry in the Pediatrics journal for medical professionals while the doctor and respiratory technician argued over whether she needed a low flow or high flow heated cannula for this method. I was able to support the viewpoint of the respiratory tech after studying up on the issue. They asked if I was in the medical profession. I told them that I wasn't but that I was really good with Google. I felt like I was in one of those Holiday Inn commercials.

So anyway, Berkeley is still getting better each day, and I'm learning more than I ever cared to learn about respiratory problems and treatments. Hopefully we'll all get to go home soon. Thank you all for the prayers and well wishes. Please keep praying that Berkeley will breathe more deeply on her own and that her oxygen levels will ... well, level out.