Be THAT Parent

I nearly lost my little girl. Seven weeks old and fighting to breathe. When she was lying flat on the table, hooked up to about 8 different machines, I could see it. Breathing so hard like she had just run a marathon. Only the right side of her chest was rising. I start to feel panic again when I write this down, which I don´t like feeling, but I have to. I want you to feel some of it too and to know that it is okay to be THAT parent.

Athena caught the cold we all had earlier. It started with our little germ machine JR who brings everything home from nursery. Artwork, toys, fevers, coughs. Everything! I got it briefly, but Miguel had it much worse. He eventually recovered. No big deal. Then Athena caught it. I watched carefully. JR was six weeks old when he caught his first cold. He was miserable, but it went away, but I am wary. I´ve had pneumonia twice in my life and one of those times my left lung collapsed. I know what can happen.
When she got a fever I took her into the emergency clinic near us. He listened to her chest, verified it was not in her lungs and gave me ibuprofen for the fever. If it got worse I was to go to her regular doctor. It got better or what seemed better. The morning she was admitted to hospital she had no fever. It was the first day of no fever since I took her in five days earlier, but her fever had been getting progressively better. I wasn´t convinced though while she improved. Something felt off. I felt bad that she seemed to be suffering so much, but then again babies are miserable when they are sick. JR was and still is when he gets a bad one.
That morning she ate, she had no fever, she was active until about 10:00 am when we went for breakfast. She was sleeping which I suppose is normal, but it seemed a very deep sleep. By noon when we left Toys ´R´Us and were going back to the car, we noticed that her lips were grey. Not rosy. And she was pale. It happened like that.
We didn´t panic, but I didn´t feel right so I suggested that we stop by the health center and see if the paediatrician was available to take a quick look at her. As we did the 30 minute drive I was starting to think about it more and felt a growing urgency. Okay, if he´s not available then we´ll go to the emergency clinic again.
When we got there the paediatrician was there. By the time we got there and he had looked at her she was even paler. He called an ambulance to take her to the hospital. I rode in the front with the driver and two female EMTs had her in the back with an oxygen mask. Miguel followed in the car. Some people are real dicks in front of a wailing ambulance by the way. Don´t be one of them.
When we got to the hospital they took her immediately into the trauma room. I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea how long I was waiting. Not knowing. I called my mom. The doctor came out and asked some questions and told me she was very sick when I asked how bad it was.
In the end my6 six week old daughter got a cold and a week later ended up with a severe case of Streptococcus pyogenes (Wikipedia it). She had a pleural effusion and at one point had 3 IVs, a chest tube which drained a total of 180ml of fluid from her lungs. She had a catheter, a feeding tube and a machine forcing oxygen up her nostrils. She also had a heart monitor and an O2 saturation monitor. All at seven weeks of age.
When she left the hospital this past Wednesday she had spent more than one third of her life in there. Three weeks to be exact. She spent her first Christmas and New Years there. All I can say to other parents is that it is okay to be THAT parent.
Be the parent that is over cautious. The one that brings their kid to the doctor if they sneeze twice in a row. The one that others roll their eyes at and groan about. The parent that makes the doctors and nurses say “here we go again”. All week leading up to this I had it in my head that I didn´t want to be that parent. If I had kept on ignoring my instincts who knows what would have happened. Be THAT parent because the alternative can be more that you want to imagine. You´ve got company now.