Be Still

Many of you know that Lily is very sick and in the hospital PICU right now. She’d had some mild cold symptoms for a couple of days, but nothing terribly worrisome. At 2 am on Wednesday, she crawled in bed with me and woke Mark and I up with her croupy coughing. The nebs seemed to help, but 2 hours later her respirations were 100. After another neb, they were down in the 60s again. (I know 60 seems high to many people, but it’s not so bad compared to 120!) We continued nebbing every 2 hours, and Lily managed okay.

Wednesday around bedtime, I noticed Lily’s respirations were staying in the 70-90 range pretty exclusively. After her 10 pm neb, I started seeing retractions, which I hadn’t noticed before. At that point, I packed a bag, knowing we were going in.

The ER experience was perfect! We had a great doctor who was very on top of things, an excellent nurse who got the IV in on the first try. And, we were in our PICU room within 2-1/2 hours of arrival. I think that’s practically unheard of!

We got Lily settled into her new bed, vitals were taken, cardiac monitors were hooked up, I was standing by Lily’s bed, holding her hand, when I noticed the HR on her monitor shoot up to 200+, and I quizzically remarked, “Is that reading correctly?” The nurse turned around, pushed a button, and said 4 words no parent ever wants to hear: Bring the crash cart!

My heart leaped into my throat, and my throat closed up. I moved up to Lily’s head, so I could still hold her hand, but also let the doctors and nurses do their jobs. Over and over I prayed that she would be okay. Leaving the hospital without her just wasn’t an option!

Let me get this out of the way now. H1N1 has me freaked out. I read stuff on Dr. Mercola’s site where he says this flu has really been blown out of proportion. Only those with underlying health problems have died from it. People just need to let their immune systems fight it off. Yes, I’ve seen all that, and still, I’m not comforted. You see, the whole “survival of the fittest” mentality really isn’t cutting it for me. This is my baby we’re talking about! Asthma or not, tracheomalacia or not, I want her to grow up to live a long, healthy life!

Before we left the house, I had a near freak out incident while I was upstairs packing my bag. As I was leaving my bedroom, God spoke to me. He said, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalms 46:10) Then He said, “Be anxious about nothing…” (Philippians 4:6)

All of last night, those words became my mantra. Anytime I felt myself starting to worry, I repeated, “Be still and know that I am God.” These words were repeated many, many, many times in the course of the last several hours!

Within a minute of her v-tach episode, Lily settled down again and her readings were normal. The intensivist said later that he thought the episode looked “artifactual,” which I presume essentially means “false reading.” The nurse certainly thought it looked real, but only God knows for sure. Either way, I’m thankful the rest of the day has gone well.

Diagnosis is pneumonia, Influenza A, and likely H1N1 (although we don’t have the results back from that test yet). Lily has been on 100% oxygen and 8 L of flow on the MR-850 or high flow oxygen. She is still receiving nebs every 2 hours, and they’ve been doing vest treatments every 4 hours.

O2 was just weaned down to 80%, and she’s tolerating it well so far. HR and RR are both lower, and Lily looks more comfortable overall. I’m not going to say we’re over the worst because I know things could take a turn at any time. For now, I’m just being still in the knowledge that God is God.