Thursday, September 24, 2009

A Little More History

Once we were able to take Walter home from the hospital we were instructed to show up at Children's Medical Center of Dallas at 8:00 the following morning. There we met a few of the doctors that would be taking part in Walter's care. We became part of the "Vascular Abnormality Clinic" which consists of doctors from both Children's and Scottish Rite Hospital who work on cases together to determine the best route of maintenance and care. Since his condition will never go away it becomes a situation where we work together to maintain the pain associated with it. The doctor we spent the most face time with, Dr. Burns, actually lives only a few blocks away and went to the same high school and my husband and me. Small world. Once I get back to my house from the hospital I will upload pictures of what his leg looked like. Ha! I have no idea when that will be!

So we began to settle into the idea that he had this congenital condition and the shock began to wear off and we were able to settle into our own skin a little bit. Not for long, though. He came down with what I thought was a nasty cold when he was 7 weeks old. I took him to the pediatricican who told me very calmly, "I would like you to take him to Children's hospital. Do not go home and get anything, just go there. I don't want to scare you, but I want you to go quickly". What? What in the world?

So off we went, back to Children's, and of course this time I knew the way. We were immediately taken into the ER by wonderful doctors and nurses. They quickly determined Walter had a pretty severe case of RSV. I had heard horror stories about RSV, mainly from my sister, whose twins caught the virus when they were 4 months old. We were quickly checked into a room, which I learned during my stay there was nothing short of a miracle because of the numbers of children affected with RSV. It was absolutely terrible to watch my baby once again hooked up to all kinds of machines to help him breathe. Once again I questioned how we had ended up there, why my sweet baby was once again begin poked and prodded by doctors. We were there for seven days before we were released under strict orders to try our best to keep Walter inside the house as much as possible.

While I was in the hospital I made a video of Walter with my cell phone. It shows what a RSV coughing fit looks like. I took this video to show to my friends with newborns because I had no idea what I was seeing when he began his coughing. Had I known what to look for, maybe we could have caught the RSV earlier? Again, once I am home from the hospital I will upload the video.