18.6.08

Prayer request for Alirio!

Hola…so prayer request here.  One of my tots, Alirio, is 15 months and is a super smiley toddler who is laughing ALL the time.  He is precious and so fun to play with.  You’ll see a picture soon.  Anyway, today the Tias (caregivers in the babyhouse) came to me and charaded/spoke to me in Portuguese…ha ha…that he had been coughing a lot at night all night and that his nose was running a lot.  So I walked over and checked him out…no fever, occasional cough, runny nose (can I say that practically all the babies have this….33 in one house will do that)…playing, laughing just like normal, eating well, sounded great, no congestion or anything in his chest…so made a note of it in our very unofficial calendar of baby events (think nurses notes on the fly) and went about my day thinking I would check in on him at my 1pm rounds when I give meds again.  By the time I got back the other nurse Erin had been called and was in there giving him a nebulizer treatment of albuterol because he was lethargic, wheezing like crazy audibly, and retracting really hard…no playing, no laughing, hardly moving.  AAAHHH!!!  So we gave it to him and near the end he was fighting us and moving all around, talking to us again, but within 10 minutes he started up again….so we tried a 2nd round.  He responded again to the treatment and then it was naptime…I laid him on his belly (those vandy mds would be proud…you couldn’t even see the mild retractions) and went to go eat my late lunch…I’ll be back in 1.5 hrs to check and the tias were to call if any problems.  When I woke him up from his nap he was just working to breathe a little but no wheezing.  I decided to take him to our clinic md (run by Mozambicans) and see what she thought….well she ordered a bunch of stuff and then 3 of us nurses from the western world got together and decided to ignore all and do what we would do at home….so by that time he was wheezing again and I gave him another treatment and watched him go from leaning against me, struggling to playing and trying to climb out of my lap and grabbing at everything.  Current game plan…started on oral steroids and will do nebulizers every 3-4 hrs throughout the night…if he gets worse or not better by the AM we will go to the hospital.  Please pray for Alirio.  He is so sweet and a really healthy baby (usually).  I hate to see him like this.  Also pray that tonight goes well and he doesn’t get worse as we are 45 min from the hospital and only have a small oxygen tank and nebulizers on base here.  I’ll keep you updated.  Sorry if this was too much medical for some of you….all my nursing gals would want to know! 

1 comment:

Amy said...

Us Vandy nurses are proud! We know you are taking the best care of him and all the babies that you can. We will be praying for you all!