Owen's bronchiolitis - 10 days in Paediatrics at Flinders Medical Centre

Owen 6 months playing in the activity center

We've been home a week now since Owen's 10 day admission to the Paediatrics ward at Flinders Medical Centre.  It was a surreal experience spending those days watching little Owen fighting the bronchiolitis that had taken all of his energy and smiles.  It felt like we had lost time.

Usually Owen is a happy baby but we always know when he is unwell because he is not happy either laughing or smiling.  But that is pretty rare and its not the sort of thing you want to happen to your child either.

After our walking tour at the Kuarna community centre at Bedford Park, Owen started really struggling to breath.  He seemed to be so miserable too.  We were celebrating Michael's 27th birthday with the family at Diana and Chris' that night.  Owen was crying the whole time.  When people started to leave we had a good look at Owen and good see that he was very sick, so we rang the Health hot line to speak with a registered nurse.  After determining that he was struggling to breath, his whole body was moving, the skin was being sucked in around his ribs, and neck.  The RN advised us to take Owen to hospital straight away.  It was an emergency.

We arrived at Emergency Flinders Medical Centre around 10pm and by 1pm were admitted to Paediatrics Ward.  They had determined he was seriously ill with bronchiolotis a condition caused by a virus in the lungs.  Because his work of breath was hard, his oxygen levels in the blood, they determined his saturation was too low at around 90%, respiratory rate, and heart rate were elevated to dangerous levels. Respiratory rate at around 70 breaths per minute normally no more than 30 and his heart rate was around 170 beats per minutes normally no more than 130.  The virus had put his whole body under stress.  They put him on two litres per minute oxygen via  a nasal tube to assist with his breathing.  The virus wouldn't allow the deeper part of his airways to transfer oxygen into his blood.  He also had a temperature of 39. They did an xray too. 

They tested for the type of virus but two days later it came back negative.  Their is usually not a lot they can do when its a virus causing this problem.  They can only provide support through oxygen, panadol and fluids.  It just determines how long baby will be in hospital. Owen also had an intravenous canula put in his hand so that they could give him fluids for a few days.  This meant that I wasn't to feed him normally, only comfort feeds, so that his stomach wasn't full of milk and making pressure on his lungs.  I was so upset when they put the IV line (gelco) in his hand, I nearly cried but Owen was fine.  He was connected to a monitor to check these via a probe attached to his foot. 

It was awful to see him hooked up to all these machines, and lying there lifeless.  There was absolutely nothing I could do for him, except cuddles of course.  But he was in the best hands ever.  The nurses and doctors were absolutely fabulous.  For the first four days they were in every hour to do their observations.  These were recorded on a graph.  They checked saturation, respiratory rate, heart rate, and temperature.  There were also some others things they did too.  After four days they did two hourly obs.  There seemed to be a cycle in his obs depending on whether he had been feeding or sleeping. 

Luckily for around eight days we had our own room.  I was so tired on the first few days I hardly remember anything.  I spent some time watching a few movies, reading, going for quick walks to the sports oval nearby.  As a breast feeding mother I was provided with all of my meals too. 

On the night that Owen was admitted Jamie was to go to Sydney early in the morning for a server and desktop installation for one of their major customers. I decided not to tell him that we had been admitted until around mid day not to interfere with his work. He was so worried he decided to come home to see Owen that evening. Jamie also had to do a trip the following week to Hobart for the same customer.  Diana and Chris cared for Charlie on the days Jamie was interstate for work. BTW the nurses enjoyed the Crispy cream donuts from Sydney airport.

Doctors visited us twice a day and the Professor visited us on the weekend.  I was impressed to see him working weekends.  He was a lovely man. 

We missed Charlie because we didn't see him for quite a few days because we didn't want to expose him to any bugs in the ward.  There were all sorts of nasty viruses in the ward. 

The Paediatrics ward had recently been refurbished with an ocean like a big fish bowl.  They had a fish pond in the nurses station where the children could view the fish through a hole in the side of the wall.  All of the doors were glass with different marine life imprinted on them like clown fish, starfish (ours), dolphins, fish, sharks and sea grasses.  There was a play area for children and a laundry for parents to wash cloths.  I washed clothes most days.

On around day eight much to my surprise my BF Renae's little boy Jai was admitted to the ward too.  He was very sick with bronchiolitis.  It was good to have the support of a friend at the ward, but how are the odds of having a close friend in hospital at the same time.   Pretty rare hey! I felt sorry for Renae and Jai because they were put in a share room with four other babies/mothers and she had no sleep that night.  After they found out what Jai had they put him in his own room straight away because he was so contagious.

After day eight they started to reduce Owen's oxygen from 2 slowly to 1.5, then 1.0, then .5 and then nothing.  He seemed to be working very hard with his breathing but they thought that he would cope ok. He respiratory rate, saturation and heart rates were better but not completely back to normal but he would be ok at home as long as we kept an eye on him.  The Doctors were confident I would be able to see the signs of another relapse if that was the case.

By day eight they had also moved me from a single room to a share room, with a young lass suffering from anorexia.  She was lovely girl.  Very sad to see her fading like that.  The whole time she talked about her fashion design and was doing small paintings and putting them in frames bordered with beads. I hope she is going to be okay.

So we left on day 10.  I found the support from staff amazing.  The whole environment was ideal for supporting families with sick children.  You are not made to feel that you are costing them money. 

It was pretty rough watching Owen suffer but I knew he was in the best hands ever so this relieved the stress of the situation.  We were happy to see Owen be back to his normal self again, that is of course smiling and happy.

It was nice to go home.