 |
| From left to right: Chris' pumpkin pirate ship, Emily's pumpkin, Zoë's mummy pumpkin, and Griffin's Daniel Tiger pumpkin! |
Last weekend we attended a lovely Halloween party at our good friends' house. Zoë wore her chicken costume for a good portion of the party (and we had to feed a her a minimal amount of M&Ms to keep it on) and I would say it was a hit. Finding the ideas on Pinterest are easy, but putting them together are not always the easiest! She hated having the feathers from the boa I had pinned to a white sweater tickle her face and had an especially hard time eating anything because every time she'd bring the food to her mouth she would also get a mouthful of feathers. Because the feet we had made with rubber gloves over a pair of her shoes were so hard to walk in, she ended up looking more like a chicken because she had to pick her feet up so high each time she took a step. It was awesome! And, all of her boyfriends were equally as cute in their costumes. :)
On Tuesday Zoë came down with a horrific cough that got progressively worse throughout the day. She was extremely clingy to the point where she wouldn't let me put her down all afternoon and evening. When we put her to bed and checked on her about an hour later, we noticed that her breathing was really really fast and her entire belly was moving a lot more than usual when she breathed in and out. Chris called the nurse line where they recommended she be seen by a doctor, so we drove to the ER and arrived at around 10:30pm. We were immediately brought back to a room in the ER where Zoë had a nebulizer of Albuterol, a chest x-ray, and a dose of steroid. Her breathing was still really labored and when her x-rays came back the doctor ruled out pneumonia.
 |
| Happy to be out of her costume. |
By about 3:30am, her oxygen saturation level was steady only because she had a cannula in with a steady flow of oxygen and her breathing was still pretty rapid, so they admitted us. The doctors finally said she had a Reactive Airway which was triggered by a virus she came into contact with and could potentially develop into asthma eventually. By mid-afternoon yesterday the doctor took her off the oxygen since she could keep a steady saturation level, so that was nice. The nurse let her take a break from being hooked to her heart monitor, too, which was wonderful to let her run around her room (she was in isolation on the Peds floor, so she couldn't take a walk around outside of her room) She stayed overnight last night because they wanted to monitor her some more since her breathing was STILL labored. At this point, she was getting Albuterol treatments every three hours (from an inhaler, not the nebulizer).
 |
| First pumpkin carving as an active participant... |
 |
| ...not really a fan... |
 |
| Yuck! Pumpkin guts! |
Finally, today they stretched her treatments to every 4 hours and she was doing much better, so they released her this afternoon. She slept ok last night, but was still a very tired girl from her big hospital ordeal. And so are we! Chris is a saint and stayed the night last night with her while I went home to get some sleep and then went to work today. In the future, we know she'll probably have a few more episodes just like this (but hopefully we can curb them because we'll have an inhaler for her) and it may or may not develop into full-blown asthma. We were reminded that asthma is a pretty common development for micro-preemies like Zoë, something that had completely been dispelled from my mind since she's been so healthy and caught up development-wise with her peers. A good reality check that she's not invincible (it's felt that way for these first 21 months of her life!) and a reminder to give her extra squeezes each day because she's such a strong little girl.
 |
| Zoë with her boyfriends |
 |
| Pockets!!! |
 |
| New rain jacket for a really rainy afternoon outside with dad in the leaves! |
We had to postpone her surgery that was scheduled for tomorrow because of all of these complications and it's rescheduled for the day before Thanksgiving (awesome). I was all mentally prepared for that, too, which is a bummer that I'm going to have to gear myself back up again!
