Audrey's Fight: Easing Medical Burdens

Wednesday June 4th started out like any other day with my Audrey girl. Her happy self. She was a little sneezy and congested, but still in good spirits. As the day went on she declined rapidly. 2am she wakes up wheezing and retracting with a 102 degree fever. I ended up taking her to the ER where they transported us to the Children’s hospital in Nashville. She was diagnosed with Bronchiolitis and discharged. We went home and rested but once again 2am comes and she’s really struggling to breathe so I decided to take her back to the ER. I got a mile from home and ended up calling 911 because she was not okay. The ER ended up giving 2 rounds of breathing treatments and a round of steroids and then transported us again. We were admitted to Children’s for 5 hours before once again being discharged. I should have trusted my gut right then and there and said no, but I didn’t. We went home and again rested and pushed fluids because at this point she wasn’t even eating. 3am (Saturday morning) rolls around and she had lost all color and Andrew ended up taking her in because I was absolutely exhausted. He called me about 30 minutes to an hour later telling me to get to the hospital because they were sedating and intubating her. Her little body was just too tired to keep fighting. That image of my sweet little 5 month old baby will forever be burned into my brain.

Once again we got transported by Angel Care (lights and sirens) all the way to Nashville where she was immediately admitted to the PICU. From there it’s been a series of tests and chaos. She was ultimately diagnosed with Croup, Parainfluenza and pneumonia. All these different respiratory infections attacking her at one time. They kept her intubated all Saturday and into Sunday.

Sunday they extubated her because her numbers looked great. She was on high flow oxygen and fluids because she was extremely dehydrated at this point. Monday they thought she was doing great so when Andrew got there to take over for me so I could sleep, they moved her to another floor. 2 hours later she was retracting and struggling to breathe so she headed straight back to the PICU. Tuesday they started her on Heliox to see if that may help. An hour on that and she lost all color and started turning blue so once again she was intubated. We are still trying to figure out why she isn’t making any progress. Blood work and X-rays look great. We are currently waiting on cultures from her stomach secretions because we believe that will give us the answers we are desperately seeking. Considering we have no answers, we anticipate being there for another 5 to 7 days!

This has been a really rough week on our entire family and we still can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We are just looking for a little help. I haven’t been able to work which is a big part of our finances, the money we’re spending on gas to get back and forth, groceries for the older kids, plus for ourselves while we’re taking turns staying with her at the hospital, not to mention the medical bills that will soon follow.

I know times are hard for everyone but I had to give this a shot to help my little family.

We absolutely appreciate all the love and support everyone has already given us! It has been the biggest blessing!