Our Holidays!

I don't know where to start, first I do want to say thank you to all of our friends and family. You have no idea how much we appreciate your love and support, and all of your prayers for Cole.
On Tuesday the 23rd I took Cole to the Dr.'s because he was getting a cough and had started having a lot of spit. So I just wanted to make sure he was okay and that it wasn't RSV. The Doc said oh it's just a cold and he has an ear infection, so we went home with a prescription and thought no big deal.
We were having all of my family over to our house for Christmas, so they began showing up on Christmas Eve. We had a a fun filled night , we all got to open up our Christmas PJ's, then sang Christmas carols. I did notice that Cole had been breathing really fast but didn't really think anything of it. We got all the kids off to bed and then all of us adults began to get Santa stuff ready.That night Cole was really having a hard time going to sleep and we were trying to get Christmas set up and to say the least I was loosing my patience. On Christmas morning he ate around 4:00 a.m and then I just couldn't get him to settle back down. Then all of a sudden he started gasping for air, it was so scary it was like he was hiper ventilating. My sister Kristi who is a neonatal nurse took a look at him and said you need to get to the hospital, he doesn't look good. So before we had a chance to do anything Dave and I rushed over to the ER.
Did you know that if you say that your baby is barely able to breathe they rush you straight on back. After a couple of breathing treatments and some oxygen he seemed to settle down. They took an x-ray and did an RSV test. They said that it looked like he has pneumonia and that he would have to be admitted for at least a day. So we were taken over to Thunderbird hospital, Coles first ambulance ride and not his last. He did fine on the ride over but once we got there he started gasping for air again, so all of a sudden there are a ton of nurses around him suctioning him and getting him oxygen. Dave and I just sat there watching him struggle to breathe, I couldn't believe what was happening. Once they have Cole suctioned out he calms down and I'm able to hold him, The Doc comes in and takes a look at him and tells us that we will be at the hospital for anywhere from 5 to 7 days. Which I'm thinking are you kidding me, can't you fix him quicker than that. So over the next three days Cole would be suctioned almost every two hours and when I say suctioned it means they take a little tube and thread it down his nose to his throat and suction out what ever they can find. I think that I got maybe six hours of sleep total during this time, because if Cole was laid down he couldn't breathe and it seemed like he was only comfortable if I was holding him. So Dave felt horrible because he really couldn't help much.
By Saturday night Cole was really struggling to breathe and they decided that he needed to be moved to St. Josephs PICU. So at 12:00 a.m Sunday morning we took another ambulance ride. And were admitted to St. Joes, at first Cole was acting fine and they thought hey nothings wrong with this kid, why was he sent here? Well they decided to run some more tests just to be sure of what he had, turns out he did have RSV, apparently they didn't do the tests correctly at the other hospital. By Sunday night Cole was fading you could just see how week he was, it was so sad to look into his eyes. It was like he was begging you to help him, he also hadn't gotten much sleep because he couldn't breathe. So after trying a few breathing treatments they decided that he needed to be intubated before it got so bad that it would be an emergency situation.
Once intubated he could be kept sedated so that his body would allow the machine to breathe for him, that way his body could rest and heal. Now let me just say that the doctors and my sister warned us that RSV can be very ugly, and that it goes in spurts of you think that they are getting better and then they get really bad. And back and forth like this several times. Basically you think it's bad and then you realize nope it can get worse. While he was intubated his right upper lung partially collapsed and he also got the H-flu or influenza on top of all this. Luckily they caught the flu before it got to bad.
During this time at the hospital we learned lots of terms and phrases that I wish we didn't know. Like Bradying, which means all of his stats drop it is very scary when all of a sudden your child's heart rate is in the 40's or 60's an hist o2 levels are about the same. And you also have to watch there co2 levels which need to be in the 30's to 40's but happen to be up in the 90's at times. I lost count of how many times he had to be bagged, to get all of his stats back to normal. I have learned to hate monitors, they now scare me it's like you want them but then you don't. We would find ourselves just watching them and every time numbers would start to drop you just beg for the numbers to go back to normal. Cole was intubated for about a week, his tubes came out the following Sunday morning. While intubated he had x-rays at least once a day, was poked at up to 4 times a day to get his blood gases. Went through 6 different IV's, became slightly addicted to fentanyl and verset. He had continual suctioning done, but with the breathing tube in you could at least suction the lungs really well, which is where everything was building up.
Once he was extubated he then had oral aversion, which is where he doesn't want anything near his mouth, which I don't blame him there. He had to relearn how to suck, so for the first 48 hours after being extubated he wouldn't eat, and they were not giving him any food through a feeding tube. The hope was that if he got hungry enough he would eat, well that didn't happen so they ended up putting in another feeding tube. I was constantly trying to get him to nurse, we even tried bottles but he wouldn't take them either. He still had a lot of mucus in his nose and throat so he was still being deep suctioned about once an hour. Finally we got that under control and since he could then breathe better he started nursing again.
The last two days in the hospital were spent on the Pediatric floor where they were weaning him off his drugs and seeing if was gaining weight back. During this ordeal he lost about a pound, which is not good if you are a baby. Finally on Friday the 9Th of January we were released to come home, those were the most wonderful words I had ever heard.
Over the last 2 weeks I have grown so close to my Heavenly Father and to Dave, I know that it seemed like each time we made progress we were thrown another set back. But I knew that Heavenly Father was there with me, I don't know how many prayers were offered in our behalf but we were truly blessed because of those prayers. I must say that I am so grateful that Dave holds the priesthood and for his strength during this time. And I am so grateful for our families and their love and support, Daves parents were able to come down and help out with Jaden and TY.
I know Jaden and Ty didn't get the Holiday celebration they were expecting but they have been so good. They haven't complained at all, they just wanted their brother to get better. They were able to come and see Cole at the hospital a couple of times. They loved being able to see him and they got to wear masks and gloves they thought that was so cool. Anyways we are all together again, and now we just have to keep Cole healthy because his immune system is shot. So I'm trying to keep my house as germ free as possible. Cole is basically on house arrest until May, that is when RSV season is over. But hey I'll take that over being in the hospital again. I never want to repeat these last two weeks again.