Quite a Scary Day!

Well, yesterday was a rough day, for all of us, but especially Dawson! Yesterday morning they had to sedate Dawson to do a Echocardiogram to make sure that the staph infection he has in his brain is not also in his heart.

When they sedate they usually give an initial half dose, then follow up with the last half once they are asleep. However, with Dawson they gave the first dose and for whatever reason decided that should be good and they didn't give him the second dose.

When he was coming out of the sedation he apparently had enough of it all. For the next 5 hours 4 nurses and I stood by his bed trying to make him breath. He just didn't have it in him anymore. At this point we figured out that the Staph infection was much worse and a lot more aggressive than we had thought. After pinching, patting and constantly stimulating him to get the only 7 breaths a minute, when he should be over 20, he was put on CPAP, which would push air in through his nose to help him breathe and keep his lungs open. After about 30 min he was still struggling. The Resperatory Therapist was starting to panic and we rushed him to the ICU. She just couldn't get over that this was only on a half dose. When I told her how glad I was that they didn't give the second dose, she told me that if they had we would have lost Dawson. Again, we have a moment to thank Heavenly Father for our son, and that he intervened with the medical process once again.

By this time I had talked to Ryan and he was throwing everything together to get him, Mal and Jake here. He had checked on flights from the Sun Valley airport, which is just a few minutes from our house, and the only option was a flight out at 8:40 pm for over $300, one way, for each ticket! YIKES!! So Ryan was going to jump in the suburban and drive down. 20 min after checking the prices he was about to head out and decided to check one more time on the tickets. He went back to the same place he checked before and.....who knows why, but within that 20 min they dropped the prices to $111!! Ryan immediately bought them and headed to the airport. He was happy, his 6 hour drive just turned to a 45 min flight!

Anyway, when we got to the ICU with Dawson there were several doctors and nurses gathered around him helping him breathe and getting him settled. My thoughts were that he needed a blessing ASAP and I was going to go down to the main desk to have LDS Elders paged. As I was about to leave Dawson I turned to see a friend from high school coming toward me, with her Dad, one of our old Seminary Teachers, right behind her. I grabbed them and asked if he could give Dawson a blessing and he immediately did. We talked for a moment then they headed back to our friends baby with RSV. It was 7pm and time for shift change. They kick everyone out for an hour while they change. I said goodbye to Dawson and left for an hour. When I came back in, he was no longer on the CPAP, and while he did have a Nasal Cannula for a little extra Oxygen, he was breathing on his own and doing great! He was wide awake and looked better than I have seen him in a few days! I left a little boy that was in very critical condition and came back to a boy that was stable and they were talking about sending him back to his room in the Neuro Trauma Unit! WHAT A BLESSING!!

When Ryan's flight came in my parents picked him and the kids up and brought them to the hospital. Man, was I glad to see Ryan! It is so much easier to do this with him with me! My parents took Jake and Mallory back to their house for the night and Ryan and I stayed with Dawson for a while longer. He was comfortable and happy, and although we are still worried about his very low blood pressure and lethargy, we are happy to see that he is willing to still fight!

What a day! We are headed back to the hospital now. They are going to take Dawson down for a CT scan to see if there are problems, and they are also taking him in for a PIC line. When they do this they will have to sedate him again. They will use a different drug, but he HAS to have that line in order to get his antibiotics to him. We will being praying that he does well, and that the Lord remains with the doctors and nurses that attend to him.

Thank you all for your prayers and thoughts! We appreciate you all so much! We are so grateful for the help that is offered. This would be impossible to do without you!!