Amanda, parent of an RSV survivor, shares her family's experience
Amanda is a proud parent of an RSV survivor.
Transcript
I'm Amanda. I am a mom of three. We live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
And we just experienced a severe RSV case with our youngest, Colton.
Overall, he was in the hospital for 16 days. [MUSIC PLAYING]
Colton's RSV experience started when he was 17 months old. We went on a family vacation to Florida,
and we noticed towards the end of our trip that Colton was starting to get sick. And a few days later, we came back home to New Mexico,
and we took Colton in to the urgent care because he wasn't getting any better. They rushed him over to the ER, and he still
needed a higher level of care, so they decided to move him to the pediatric intensive care unit. From there, he was intubated for six days.
And with the medical team and their extreme knowledge on RSV, they were able to get Colton to a point
where he was able to come off the ventilator, make the turn, and start getting better. The most harrowing experience for us
in the hospital with Colton was he started desatting. Desatting is where your oxygen will drop below 90.
They will remove the ventilator tube and the nurse will attach a bag, and they will start manually
bagging him to get oxygen into his-- into his lungs. However, at that time, he coded.
His oxygen and his heart rate was at a flatline when I looked at the screen. At that point, there was like, 20 people
in our room with the code, and they all started working on him, bagging him. Except this time, when they were bagging him,
his oxygen wasn't coming back up. And at that point, I thought that maybe this was going to be the end.
It was probably about 45 seconds later he started coming back up, his oxygen and his heart rate started coming back up.
It wasn't long, but 45 seconds of you thinking that your baby is not there is a long time.
My advice for other parents with young babies or children under two is one thing that I wasn't
aware of was retractions in a baby. So when they're breathing, and they're struggling to breathe,
you can really tell between how they're breathing is through the retractions of their stomach,
the neck, and their nose. You know the signs and the symptoms of RSV
and when you should take them to the hospital. RSV changed our lives, how easy it
can be for something to come in and just take away your children. Colton is doing amazing now.
It's been a year since he was hospitalized, and now, he's doing amazing, running around being a toddler.
You would never know that he struggled for his life. Like, he is just perfect now. He runs around, screams, crazy toddler,
and we enjoy every moment of his craziness. [LAUGHS]
infections
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