Emergency Room :(

Friday night, we had to take Cooper to the emergency room–his respiratory rate was as high as 100/min, whereas 60 is the upper end of normal for his age. After 6 hours in the ER, a chest X-ray, monitoring and blood work they admitted him to the pediatric unit for observation and to figure out what was going on. The good news is that they checked everything, and aside from the fast breathing, he’s perfect. His oxygen saturation is at or near 100%, no fever, no infection, bloodwork all good, chest X-ray negative, echocardiogram looks perfect, as does the brain echo they did. They ruled out all the really bad stuff and monitored him for over 24 hours to make sure he’s safe. At this point, we’re left with the strong possibility that this is just “normal” for him, and that he’ll grow out of it eventually. We’re unsure whether this started on Friday, got worse Friday, or we just noticed it on Friday.

We had a follow-up with his doctor the following Tuesday and he also felt that the tests showed no other signs of concern, but did recommend we not go to Jackson Hole for the upcoming family reunion due to the prolonged time at the higher elevation.