Cash's Trip To The ER

On Thursday, the monitor Cash was sent home on alarmed that he had an apnea episode. I was home alone with him as Johnny had run across the street to grab us a bite to eat for lunch. Cash was in the bassinet sleeping, so I reached in, laid my hand on his belly and gently shook him. The apnea alarm cleared but then the low heart rate alarm went off. That's set to go off if his heart rate gets down to 80 or below. He was extremely pale which concerned me a bit. When Johnny got back home, he thought Cash looked very pale also but by that point Cash seemed to be fine. I checked the leads (the sensor pads) to make sure they were on him in the right location and that they were snug and they appeared to be. We ate our lunch then Johnny left for work. He had only been gone about 5 minutes or so when Cash's apnea alarm went off again. He was still in his bassinet so again I reached in and gently shook him. He didn't respond so I picked him up and tried to wake him up. He was very lethargic and didn't want to wake up for me. I called Johnny (bawling, of course) and he told me to call Cash's doctor's office and that he was coming back home. When he got home, I was on the phone with the triage nurse who directed us to take Cash into the emergency room unless we needed an ambulance. Johnny had taken Cash from me when he got home and was able to get Cash woke up. He had his eyes open, but still was relatively unresponsive and lethargic. We got Cash bundled up in his car seat and headed into Waterloo to the ER. Once there, they had us bypass the ER and just admitted him to pediatrics per his doctor's orders as she was the doctor on call. While waiting for the doctor to show up, the nurses did some blood tests and chest x-rays to check for infections, pneumonia, RSV, flu, etc. The tests all came back that everything was normal which was good news. The doctor said it could just be that Cash has a little bit of a cold that he's fighting off, but that we would know more once they were able to get the information downloaded from Cash's home monitor. Friday morning, Apria came and picked up Cash's monitor, leaving us with a new one. They took his monitor back to their office to download the information from it. The information they downloaded showed that Cash's leads were loose so the apnea and low heart rate alarms were false alarms. I was surprised to hear that considering we've had a couple false alarms before and when I checked the leads those times, they were loose and in the wrong spot. This time when I double checked them, they seemed fine. We still aren't really sure why Cash was so pale and lethargic when the alarms went off - other than as his doctor said, maybe he is fighting off a cold. He also didn't sleep very well Wednesday night so maybe he was just needing some really good sleep. He did wake up about 9:50 pm on Thursday night to eat and stayed wide awake and alert until about 2:30 am. He seemed like his "old self" which was reassuring to us. Johnny and I both agreed we hope we never have to go through this again - but I have a feeling this is only the beginning with this guy. Especially if he's anything like his daddy was as a kid!!!! Plus with me being such a "Psycho Mom", I'll be taking him to the doctor or ER for every bump, bruise and cough he gets! Poor Cash. I commented to Johnny that I'm going to have a full head of gray hair by the time Cash turns one. Johnny said he won't have any hair left by Cash's first birthday. Sigh. Better break out the rocking chairs now and make our reservations for the old folk's home.