2 kids, 2 ambulance rides, 2 ER's in 24 hours...

So last Thursday, I had one of the most frightening experiences ever since becoming a mother. Noah, who had just finished breakfast and was playing peacefully in our play room, started whining. I was doing dishes and after about 30 seconds of this continuous odd whine I turned around. I saw him lying flat on his back, looking very strange. I went to pick him up and he flopped backward like he had no spine. Then his eyes started rolling back in his head and he was a scary gray color. I didn't know what was going on, so I ran and called 911. I was holding him the whole time thinking he was dying and the dispatcher was telling be to be calm. I know that's their job, but really I couldn't be calm, I had never dealt with anything like this before. He then threw up all over me and continued to breathe very sporadically and still had the worst color I have ever seen on a child. The firefighters arrived and I handed them my barf covered baby. They stripped him down and gave him oxygen. Then the paramedics walked in, assessed him and said it looked like he was recovering from a seizure!!!!!!!!!! What? My head was spinning and then Aaron walked in! I hadn't been able to call him because I was on with the 911 operator 'til the paramedics arrived and then I had to fill them in, so how on earth did Aaron know to come home? Turns out he was coming home to get some cable and it was just a complete coincidence. His color was still such a sickening gray Aaron couldn't believe it. So they loaded Noah in the ambulance and Aaron hopped in and they were off to the hospital while I ran in to change myself and Kai.
The ER doctor was a complete moron. He ordered Noah's blood to be drawn, and then didn't do ANY tests. He also passed the whole thing off as a choking episode which I knew with every ounce of mother's intuition it was not, but he just brushed me off. Mia had a choking a episode and this was NOTHING like that, in fact there wasn't a single similarity. Another reason I know it wasn't a choking thing is because he threw up and there was no out of the ordinary choking hazard in there and they also did a chest x-ray at the ER and there wasn't anything there either. There's quite a few other reasons I know it wasn't him choking, but there's still a lot left of this story. So we were out of the ER by 1pm and we went home. Aaron was really shaken up and he was so appreciative of the firefighters service and the camaraderie they offered. They called Aaron's boss and let him know what happened and they also offered to drive the city truck back for Aaron since that's what he drove home in, but left in the ambulance. We decided to take the firefighters a pizza dinner because we were so grateful. When we got home we felt pretty wiped, but Aaron still went off to work at the airport.
We realized when we got home from the firehouse that Kai was having some trouble breathing, so I got out his nebulizer for a breathing treatment. Before I put him to bed he had two more treatments. Aaron then walked in the door from the airport and said after the ordeal with Noah he couldn't concentrate and work sent him home. So I told him about Kai. We went to bed early by our standards, 10:30. Well at midnight I hear a little body walk into our room and it's Kai asking for medicine (a breathing treatment). He's struggling to breathe so I give him two treatments in a row and put him back to bed. He's back up 45 minutes later asking for medicine. I give him ANOTHER breathing treatment and he's asking for another one immediately. At this point he's had six and I don't know if he can have another. I call the advice nurse and give her all the info and she says we need to take him to the ER. So off Aaron goes back to the ER at 2:30 am with Kai this time. By 7am they are still in the ER and the medicine and treatment he's receiving there isn't working either. So they decide to send him by ambulance to be hospitalized at a children's hospital in San Francisco. Meanwhile, I had to take Noah to the pediatrician for the episode he had just 24 hours earlier, which now seems a little overshadowed. The pediatrician absolutely believes it was a seizure and is also frustrated with the ER doctor for not doing any tests on the blood he had taken the trouble of drawing anyway. She ordered an EEG for Noah and then had me fill her in on Kai. From there I rushed off to the ER just in time to see them loading Kai into the ambulance, who was saying "I don't like it, I don't like it!" During all this we had help from Aaron's parents who were driving us around, watching which ever child was left behind or picking Mia up from school. And I have to mention what a champ Mia is through all this. She even said "I wish I was sick so Noah and Kai didn't have to be." What a sweetheart<3
It's Friday afternoon now and I don't know how much more our brains and our hearts can handle. My parents decide they are going to drive up to see the kids and help out-they're 6 hours away. I walk into Kai's hospital room with Mia and it's all I can do to hold myself together. He looks so small in his big hospital bed and little hospital gown. He seemed okay, but still breathing pretty hard. Aaron said he had already seen like 5 doctors and they know for sure Kai needs to stay the night. They have him on the maximum amount of meds at the minimum amount of time they can be spaced. The next step is taking him to the ICU and putting him in an oxygen tent-thank goodness it never got to that point though. I didn't realize how serious asthma can be. I thought an inhaler could just fix it all. After about four hours Aaron and I take Mia home and Aaron's mom and sister stay there with Kai. We get dinner, shower, pack and wait for my parents to arrive. We then take them up to visit Kai who is not getting any worse, but not improving much either. They leave after an hour so we can all go to sleep, which anyone who's ever been to a hospital knows, there's never any "good" sleep going on. Around noon the next day we find out Kai needs to be there at least one more night which is discouraging because he seemed to be getting better, but we knew he was in the best place. They had to wait until he could breathe comfortably between treatments spaced four hours apart. So too many hospital meals and one more bad nights sleep later they decide he's in the clear enough to be discharged. So we get home Sunday afternoon to a sparkling clean house and prepared dinner thanks to my parents. Kai is on 4 medications now which will taper down to two by this weekend. Aaron and I feel we need to be on some kind of medication after all this, but are supremely grateful to have wonderful family and health care providers all around us. So we want to say a big thank you to firefighters McCullough, Sitton & Henderson. Dr. Tan, Dr. Do, Dr. Hardy & Dr. Stepani, More thank yous to nurses Linda, Heather, Pam, Rachel and two more whose names I can't remember, also to the respiratory therapist who saw Kai every day of his visit and I still can't remember her name! We also want to thank everyone who were sending thoughts and prayers our way. And a most enormous thank you to our parents who dropped everything and helped make this hard weekend a little more bearable. Of course we didn't think to bring a camera, but these are from Aaron's phone. Our poor little boys :(