Pneumonia

Dear Son was admitted to Big Academic Medical Center yesterday for pneumonia. I called the paramedics at 5 a.m. on Friday morning since he was breathing rapidly and shaking severely from the chills. His teacher had contacted me the day before and told me he had a fever of 99.8 in the afternoon and I began treating the fever with Motrin when he got home from school since it was starting to rise and again at midnight. Although I managed to get the fever down, by 4 a.m. on Friday morning he was breathing quite heavily and hard so I thought I'd take him to the Emergency Room. Before I could finish getting dressed, he began to have more respiratory distress, breathing rapidly and shaking severely from the chills. I took his temperature and it was normal (due to the Motrin I gave at midnight) however I became very uncomfortable and called 911. The paramedics arrived and his oxygen saturation was 88-92%, he was ice cold from the chills/shivering and his temp was normal. They took him to the nearest local ER. Upon arrival, they took a rectal temp and it had increased to 104 degrees. They began treating him however I was uncomfortable and requested a transfer to Big Academic Medical Center. Around 7 a.m. I paged Dear Son's doc and then called him at home. He arranged for the transfer. Due to impending storms, the helicopter was not allowed to fly so he was transported via ALS.



Big Academic Medical Center was able to stabalize him and he's now out of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. He has pneumonia. Other test results, include blood cultures, are pending. He is being treated with Ceftriaxone and Vancomycin. He is not vented and on oxygen at 100% so that is good. He seems relatively stable although there is still some difficulty controlling his fever and he continues to work pretty hard at times to breathe. He has been sleeping continuously since this began with the exception of opening his eyes once this morning and once yesterday afternoon.



At the present time, the cause is not known. He has had great difficulty over the past few months with choking episodes at night, that are due to his inability to manage his saliva, which is part of the progressive motor dysfunction and progressive degenerative disease. I had been working with the ENT to exhaust the non-surgical options prior to treating it surgically.



It is my understanding that they will run the full course of the antibiotics so I suspect we may be there a while.



I have extremely limited pc access but I will try and keep you posted.