The Past 24 Hours

Tests. Tests of patience. Tests of strength. Tests of all kinds. That is what our last 24 hours have been like. Thank you all for your prayers for B, he is doing better today but still exhibiting symptoms. Hopefully, his medication over the next week will squash those. Here is a recap of what happened yesterday...
Ben woke up coughing yesterday morning. We didn't think anything really of it other than his allergies must be acting up again so we gave him some nasal spray and dropped him off at daycare. I received a phone call from his daycare around 4 pm saying that he was having some issues with his breathing. He was "belly breathing". When I got to daycare I saw that he was breathing really hard using his abdomen. I took him to StatCare and they got us in to see a nurse really fast. They took his O2 levels and breathing and saw that he was breathing about 60x a minute (should be 40) and his oxygen levels were lower than normal. They gave him one breathing treatment there and told me that they were going to need to transport us by ambulance to one of the hospital ERs...that is when I started to try to not freak out. Whenever an ambulance is used, that is pretty serious, right? I asked the Dr. how serious this was, and he said the ambulance was a precaution because sometimes the little guys will just stop breathing. At that point I was just praying that he would be okay and that Jeff would get there soon. He had called and said that he had gotten my message and was on his way from practice. He finally got there and that helped calm us both down.
After the breathing treatment, I rode with Ben in the ambulance to the ER where we were until he was discharged at 12:40 am last night. Over the course of those 6 hours, he was given 6 more breathing treatments, a dose of steroids and a couple of chest x-rays. He did really well with the breathing treatments after the first couple and once they would just let him leave his thumb in his mouth while he did them. We were all really tired by the end of the night and they were talking about having us stay the night unless his O2 levels did not stay consistently higher than 93 (they should be around 100). After his final treatment, his levels finally stayed high so we got to go home.
This is probably the first part of a long journey ahead of him and us. We will need to schedule more appointments with his Dr. and perhaps specialists to figure this out. They are thinking that it is asthma but we don't know what triggered this attack or anything else. Please pray that those appointments will provide answers and ultimately, a treatment that works for B. Please pray for B's safety and for any possible flare-ups in the future. We are so grateful for the care that he has received and for everyone's concern for our son. Thank you all. We are truly blessed.