The Latest on Cooper

Tuesday night, as we were putting Cooper to bed, he started coughing.  At first we didn't think much of it, but it quickly progressed to where he couldn't seem to stop coughing.  So we checked his pulse ox and his sats were pretty low.  We put him on some oxygen and gave him some Motrin because he was on the verge of having a fever and with Cooper, that means he was going to have a fever very soon.  At 5:30 in the morning, his pulse ox alarm went off.  I went in to check on him.  I had to turn his oxygen all the way up to three liters in order for him to maintain his sats in the lower 90's, his heart rate was 170, his diaper from the night before was completely dry, and he was burning up.  I got Brad up and he took him in to the ER.

We got admitted, of course, on high flow oxygen.  But by Thursday afternoon (1:30ish), he was already down to 1.5 liters of wall oxygen.  This is a dramatic improvement; I mean the best Cooper has ever done in his whole life.  He was still having small fever flare ups, but they were easily controlled with Motrin.

By this morning, he was on 3/4 of a liter and his pulmonary doc (who, thankfully, was on service) said we could go home as long as he didn't have another high fever.  She wanted to make sure he was really over the infection before we left.  So we are already home!  He's on 1/2 a liter of oxygen, but I expect for him to be off completely and back at school on Monday, Tuesday at the latest.  This was the best and quickest hospital admission ever.  All those months of healthiness have really helped.  If this had happened a year ago, we would've been in the hospital for a week.

I will say this, though.  It is WAY more difficult to have a child in the hospital when you have a second child.  I can't imagine if I had more.  You don't want to leave Cooper alone, but you still have to be a parent to the healthy child.  Luckily, Cooper was in the hospital on the days that Semmes was at Mother's Day Out.  And luckily, we have really amazing friends who come to the hospital to sit with Cooper and bring us snacks.  I love our Little Rock family!