It is now just over four weeks, since Harriet suffered a serious respiratory attack and was admitted to the Royal Derby Hospital`s, Children Intensive care Unit. Harriet is still not one hundred percent, but is slowly getting back to a stable condition for Harriet.
After Harriet had been discharged from hospital, the real work began, having to maintain her oxygen levels and try and get her back onto a regular feeding plan with all her medicine`s, became a real uphill struggle.
Harriet was not only struggling with her oxygen saturations, but also had problems feeding through her Gastrostomy tube, located in her stomach. We were initially feeding Harriet on a twenty four hour slow feed, but this was then changed to every two hours, with medicines, which simply became too much for us to cope with. A new feeding plan was put together only a few days ago, which Harriet, has thankfully started to cope with and gave us a bit of restbite from Harriet`s ongoing problems.
We made contact with the respiratory professor Harish Vyas, at the Queen`s Medical Centre in Nottingham and asked for an urgent appointment for Harriet, as were fearful Harriet would be admitted back into Intensive Care.
Within a week Harriet was seen by professor Vyas, he had looked at Harriet`s notes and the pattern surrounding her admissions, but also wanted to know what we thought, were the main causes of Harriet`s breathing problems.
We told professor Vyas, that Harriet would start to wheeze as though she had some form of asthma, over the course of a twenty four hour period, she would then develop flu like symptoms and would then start to suffer from extreme respiratory problems.
Professor Vyas wanted to have a good look at Harriet and started to listen to her chest, he seemed pleased that this was clear and that there was no wheeze or problems. He then went onto to say that Harriet`s overall breathing looked good and that she had a nice colour.
Professor Vyas then went through all Harriet`s current medicine`s and had to increase the volumes to some of these, but at the same time, he also wanted to introduce medicines that would help Harriet cope better. One of the medicines he wanted to introduce was called Singulair or Montelukast, the QMC were doing a study on how this medicine helped patients with asthma and it seemed a perfect time to introduce Harriet to the medicine.
We were then asked whether Harriet had been prescribed any form of steroids, which would help her air ways and chest areas. To our knowledge Harriet had not been on any form of steroids at any other hospital`s and was certainly not on any repeat prescription and therefore we both replied no.
Professor Vyas told us that he would need at least a week to sit down and work out a plan for Harriet, which could be combined with Harriet`s current feeding and medicine needs, but would contact us and the relevant medical people by letter to confirm this.
Leaving the office with Harriet, we felt as though someone was now listening to us and that Harriet would now have a fighting chance in the winter months ahead.
