A Tune Up

This week Ethan had his first “tune up.” At least that’s what the 15th floor pediatrician at Texas Children’s called it. Last Sunday while I was at church I noticed that Ethan was looking a little blue around his mouth and that his respiration had gotten faster. He usually has a respiration rate of about 40 – 45 breaths a minute. On Sunday he was around 56 every time I checked him. Craig and Nolan have both had a stomach virus but I immediately discounted that in Ethan. He wasn’t vomiting and he didn’t have diarrhea…yet. He never threw up but his poo got orange instead of breast milk yellow like normal. He got dehydrated. His heart had to work harder which threw his balanced defected heart out of alignment and made his sats get bad. When we got him to the Texas Children’s ER his oxygen sats were 59 – 62…His normal is 75-85. They terrified him by holding him down while they repeatedly tried to get a viable blood sample from him…his blood is thicker because of his defects (he has more red blood cells than normal so he can survive at 80%saturation) and it made it difficult to get a blood sample without it clotting. He was on oxygen until Tuesday evening and he got to come home yesterday. It could have been much worse and now we are more aware of the type of almost unnoticeable cues to look for that will cause him major trouble. I know that this will not be the only time that he has to have a tune up, but I am feeling very blessed in the fact that it could have been much worse and that we have survived a major hurdle with his with sanity in tact.