Pno fun

After years of saying "I've never had a child have to be on antibiotics and I've never had to take a child to the ER/urgent care," I've now checked both of these off the list within the past month. The urgent care visit was for Lucas's broken leg of course, and the antibiotics are for Connor's PNEUMONIA.

Connor came down with a pretty high fever (almost 103) on Tuesday evening, had a bad cough and was complaining of a stomach ache for several days. He was also fairly lethargic and just didn't seem himself. So on Wednesday I took him to the pediatrician - hesitantly, b/c I didn't think ultimately he had more than a virus - and the ped performed a rather lengthy chest exam, and said Connor had "crackling" in his chest. He also had a fever again. So they checked his oxygen levels, and they were really low: the number should be at 97 or higher; his was hovering at 88/89, and occasionally dropped to 86. The ped said below 88 often requires someone to be on oxygen! I was so stunned. The ped said the three main factors for a pneumonia diagnosis are fever, crackling chest and low oxygen levels, and he had all three. Although the doctor did say he thought the pneumonia was in the early stages, so we caught it at a good time. He also thought that had we not come in that day, Connor likely would have made an ER visit that night.

They gave him a breathing treatment, and his numbers improved enough for the doctor to feel he would be out of the woods for the night on an aggressive treatment plan.

Connor also has significant nasal congestion; every Spring his sinuses basically turn into the Great Wall of Stuffiness. The doctor doesn't know if his allergy congestion led to the pneumonia, or if it was a virus. Either way, he is on 5 different meds: an antibiotic, an oral steroid, an albuterol inhaler, and two nasal sprays.
He's missed 3 days of school this week (he'd only missed 1.5 days the entire school year thus far), but by Monday he should be back to his routine.