Labor Day Weekend Adventure

What an adventure! Friday (9/4/09) at about 9:00pm, our little Annie gave us quite a scare. She was in the middle of breast feeding when Brittany looked down to see Annie’s face covered with blood. There was no warning. No coughing, no choking, nothing. What made it worse was Annie was extremely pale, unresponsive and struggling to breath. Jason grabbed her, un-wrapped her from the blanket she was in, and ran her into the bathroom. He then held her over the sink and patted her on the back while shouting to Brittany to get the bulb syringe. Brittany sucked out some of the blood from Annie’s nose and mouth. Finally, Annie began to cough a bit and began breathing a little bit better. She was still pale and her eyes were rolling around in her head. Her limbs were like noodles and just dangled and flopped around. Jason and his dad, Jim gave Annie a priesthood blessing in which she was blessed that the doctors would be guided in how to help her. We loaded Annie in her car seat and rushed to the emergency room at Littleton Hospital. On the way there, Brittany did her best to get Annie awake and alert on the ride over.

When we got there we ran up to the counter and informed them that we had a three week old that was struggling to breath and had blood coming from her nose. They hurriedly whisked us away to the ER and announced on the intercom the situation and asked for pediatric help. Within seconds there where about 15 nurses and doctors on the scene working to get Annie stable. They put her on oxygen and tried to get an IV started. They tried twice to get a line started in her right hand, but failed because Annie’s circulation was so bad at the time. They also tried to get a line started in her forehead, but failed again. It was at this point, Annie let out her first cry since the whole ordeal started 45 minutes before. Finally, they were able to get a line started in her left arm on the inside of her elbow. They were then able to start some saline and get Annie wrapped up. At this point, they had determined that Annie should be transported to Denver Children’s Hospital and arranged for a Flight for Life ambulance to transport her.



While we were waiting for the ambulance they took an x-ray of Annie’s chest to take a look at her lungs. They also started her on antibiotics in case she had a bacterial infection.



At around 11pm, the Flight for Life arrived and went through their routine to get Annie loaded up on the stretcher in her cute little heated box. They even gave her some sugar water to calm her down. They called it baby crack because it causes the baby to release endorphins that make the baby think she is getting food and makes her happy. They call it baby crack because it creates some of the same sensations that crack does!




We arrived at Denver Children’s a little before midnight. We were put in another emergency room until they could figure out where to put us. When we got there, they decided that they wanted to get a urine sample as well as do a spinal tap to get some spinal fluid so that they could test for a bacterial infection. They also did another couple of x-rays to see what was going on in her lungs. At 5 am, we were taken up stairs to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). After getting Annie all set up, we were shown a place to lie down. Finally, at 6 am, we were able to “sleep”. For an hour and a half at least, till Annie needed to eat again. Saturday morning came and the doctors informed us that they had no real idea what was going on yet.




The urine sample came back negative, Annie didn’t ever have a fever, and the x-rays showed “fogginess” in her left lung. The doctors thought it might be pneumonia, but given that it was localized to just her left lung, and she lacked a fever, made that unlikely. As a result, they thought she may have aspirated (inhaled) something into her lung. They were also worried that she could have a rare condition that was causing her heart to leak blood into her lungs, especially since the blood vessels near her lungs were extra prominent in the x-rays.

On Saturday afternoon, two of Brittany's aunts came over to the hospital to hold Annie and keep her quiet so that Brittany could sleep. They stayed for 5 whole hours and Brittany got a lot of needed rest! Thanks Aunt Becky and Aunt Paula!!!




Annie was taken off the oxygen on Saturday night, but unfotunately the stickers that held the oxygen to her face left super red rosy cheeks! Just like a cute baby doll!



Even though Annie was hooked up to the IV for her antibiotics, we were still able to hold her as long as we stayed near her bed. Unfortunately for Annie, the IV that they poked started having trouble, so we would have to hold it when they put her antibiotics in so that pressure did not build up. We had the option to have them poke her again, but we did not want to add one more spot to the list of needle pokes!




They did an echocardiogram (an ultra sound of her heart) on Sunday morning. The results of that came back at midnight on Sunday, showing that there wasn’t any leakage from her heart into her lungs but that she did have a small hole between the upper two chambers of her heart. They said that this is fairly common and that they usually close without any issues. Once heart problems had been eliminated from causing the nose bleed, they suggested another x-ray on Monday morning. If that came back clear, then Annie was probably be good to go home. However, if there was still foreign material in her lungs, they would do a CAT scan to see if there was a growth or other abnormalities in her lung.

Luckily, the results of the x-ray on Monday were great. They cancelled the CAT scan, took out all of Annie’s IV and removed her from all the monitors and sent us home at about 1 pm on Monday. Annie must have heard that she was going home, because she was super smiley all morning!!!






As for the cause of these events, the blood cultures came back showing that Annie had a rhino virus, also known as the common cold. In adults, this virus is harmless, but in infants can cause “acute life-threatening events,” which is what they said Annie experienced on Friday night. The virus caused Annie to be congested and her sinuses to be inflamed, which they assume caused the nose bleed. This is still a rare thing for an infant to get a nose bleed, but is more understandable because she had a virus. Most infant nose bleeds are caused by being bumped or having something stuck up their nose, but because neither of these occurred, the doctors assume it was because of the virus. All in all, as one of the doctors stated, Annie had a “very expensive nose bleed,” and we had a very tiring and stressful Labor Day weekend!