A fever that turns into the worst nightmare

It has been nearly a week now and as I start to think back to last Sunday, in order to write this post, I am overcome with similar feelings of fear and sadness that I felt on that night. 

Christina and I had caught heck of a cold (or so we thought) right around Christmas.  The kids were fine but we knew despite our best efforts we knew there was a high likelihood they may also fall ill especially our sweet Daisy being so young.  We checked temps, felt foreheads, looked for any sign of the kiddos feeling poorly.  Nothing until Sunday... Daisy's temp had ticked up a little.  We immediately called our pediatricians on call cell phone.  We had a couple of conversations about how she was acting, temp, etc with the pediatrician.  We were reminded that if she reached fever stage, 100.4, we were to administer Tylenol and take her to the ER.  Just before dinner Daisy had a temp of 100.2.  That was close enough for us.  Christina hopped in the Van with Daisy and headed for Mercy Folsom.  I stayed behind to finish dinner with Jr, get him bathed, and to bed.  I redirected my inbound mother in law to the hospital to be with the girls.  Dinner done...bath done...Jr in bed.  I began making a sandwich for my poor wife who missed dinner, was terribly ill, and gets up to feed our now one month old every 2 hours.  Sandwich made, chips and grapes packed.  I make the switch with my MIL she was now watching Jr sleep.  I am heading to the hospital to be with my girls.  Half way there I get a call from my wife.  Our daughter has stopped breathing................................................................................our sweet as honey baby girl had stopped breathing.  She went in with a fever and was now fighting for her life.  I stomped on the gas and got to the hospital and sat helplessly beside my wife watching about 20 people try and save my babies life.  Watching your child, lifeless on a bed, having CPR performed on them and you cannot do a damn thing to help is the worst thing I have ever experienced.  It is 10x worst than I imagined the worst could be.  CPR had gone on long enough that I began to loose hope that she was going to make it.  I felt dead inside....  After approx 30 min of CPR... she regained a pulse.

My little girl is alive.... They are breathing for her with a ventilator bag... Her stats seem to be all over the place but her heart is beating.  I begin to wonder what is next.... Respiratory and cardiac arrest is super serious when it happens to anyone...  Even more so when the little one is only 1 month old.

We are now at the point where we need far more tools and capability than Mercy Folsom has to offer so they contacted UC Davis Children's hospital and asked for their critical care team to be sent.  UCD has specialized teams that come to you to transfer critical condition patients to their hospital.  These folks are simply amazing.... They are just loaded with gear to ensure my little girl gets from Folsom to UCD Children's with no issues.  It takes them a little over an hour to get her stable enough to transport... Not great just stable enough.  They then take off for UCD children's.  Christina is in the transport with them.  I am following behind.

We get to the hospital a huge team of nurses, respiratory therapists, Doctors, and surgeons descend upon my little girl.  Her blood sugar is crazy high.... Oxygen saturation is low....heartbeat and blood pressure are all over the place.  The team is working to stabilize Daisy.  The docs are looking to establish a central line in a vein from her groin... To near her heart.  The central line enables them to deliver a ton of meds very quickly.  They also establish a second arterial line to obtain real time arterial blood pressure.... And enable them to obtain blood quickly for labs.

The doc attempts the first line on the right side but is unable to get it in.  As they are moving the sterile tables around to try on the left side Daisy's stats plummet.... Heart rate goes from 135 to under 40 in just a few seconds....blood pressure is almost not there.... I think at this point we may loose our little girl again.  It feels like 10 years but I am sure it is only 20 seconds.  The care team pulls out this large syringe full of some magic fluid and her levels recover almost as quickly as they fell.  I don't know if Christina and I can take another episode like this....  We are only 6 feet away but we cannot help her.  I have never had a night where I have felt so helpless and ineffective to my family.

Massive instability seemingly over.... The doc tries to get the central line into the left side and is successful.  Now meds can go a lot quicker... As her small arm based IVs were just not allowing meds to flow quick enough.  The standard ventilator does not seem to be enough for my lite girl.... So they bring in an oscillator to do her breathing.  Is it a crazy way to breath.... It puffs the lungs full of air... The oscillates 480 times per minute.  This thing is able to finally bring her oxygen saturation above 92%.  Finally we are seeing better stability.  My girl is in super critical condition.... But I feel as though we are no longer on the edge of the cliff and about to fall off.