RSV, Hospital Stays, and Emotional Exhaustion

My Recent Experience Spending the Holidays in the Hospital

January 6, 2024 | 8 min read

Lauren Van Woerden

Drained. Spent. Emotionally exhausted.

When you find yourself with nothing left to give.

No matter how you got here, acknowledge that this is where you’re at, and find a way to make space for yourself to rest before you start working out solutions to bounce back.

And most importantly, ask friends and family to intercede for you.

I’ve tried to sit down and write this out many times now in the past week, but each time I hit a sort of emotional writer’s block. I just wasn’t ready.

What my family went through leading up to the holidays came on so fast and furious that we were operating in crisis mode. My husband and I fortunately process and function quite well in crisis mode overall, but my goodness, the overlooked emotions do catch up to you.

Everything seemed fine

It had been a very normal and quiet weekend for us anticipating a week of regularly scheduled programming with a chance to wrap up our final holiday gifts and preparations for a Christmas in the Fraser Valley with family.

My son was coming down with a cold, but being in an outdoor daycare program this is a pretty normal occurrence after 5 straight days. We didn’t think anything of it, until going to bed Sunday night. Then all day Monday, he just kept getting more and more sleepy and taking smaller and faster breaths.

In instances when, as a parent, it is uncertain what qualifies as a medical emergency, we’re so thankful to have an emergency medical advice hotline to call. We were on the fence if this was just another common cold he’d wake up from okay in the morning, or if this did indeed need more attention, so we called. The nurse and doctor’s opinion was to take him into emergency right away that Monday evening (a week before Christmas) which began the start of a long hospital hopping journey.

Releasing control to the professionals

After spending the night in the hospital, we were informed on Tuesday morning that our little guy would need to be transferred from our small town hospital down to the city because he was still needing the oxygen support he had received overnight, and they didn’t have the space to support him any longer in our hometown.

Thinking this was just a space formality, I left with him by ambulance (no emergency lights needed) to settle into a room on the North Shore where he could stay as long as he needed the extra oxygen to get his lungs back to full health.

Things seemed fine during the day in our new space, but quickly changed overnight.

Did you know that your body needs more oxygen overnight, even though you are usually breathing slower than during the day?

In the wee hours of the morning, the pediatrician was already talking about transferring us again to an available pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at another hospital because his oxygen needs were already maxing out the available resources at this facility.

From bad to worse

Things stabilized enough during the day, but without seeing any significant improvement, we were still looking at a hospital transfer.

We found out there were no PICU beds available at the nearest Children’s hospital, so our next best option was a heli transfer to Vancouver Island, which brought with it a whole new set of emotions and anxiety, because we wouldn’t have access to the support we’d been offered from friends and family who were just an hour away at this point.

We quickly called out to our praying community and asked specifically for prayer that a PICU bed at the Children’s hospital would open up for us.

On Wednesday evening we were informed that the weather was too bad for us to be flown to the island, and there were still no beds available at the Children’s hospital.

This is when our crisis mode faces started turning to raw emotions and we realized the gravity of the situation our little boy was in, still laying there mostly lethargic with high flow oxygen tubes to his nose.

Operating in unknown territory

Before we could process it all, this North Shore hospital did something they say they’ve never done before: they pulled together the best staff from all the necessary departments to pull off an oxygen mask procedure on a two-year-old.

There were at least five medical staff in the room at all times once this plan was in motion. I sat in the bed with my little boy on my lap to comfort him and calm him down. Through my own tears, I just kept saying to him, “Mommy’s here. I love you. The doctors are helping you. You’re such a strong boy. We can do this together.” …over and over again.

We had family in the room to support us as parents and just pray over the procedures and ask for healing for our little boy. In the hardest moment of the whole thing, looking up and seeing them with their heads down interceding for him gave me strength to keep going and helping him through.

Additional IVs, feeding tube, full-face oxygen mask, extra monitors, sedatives, so many expert medical staff and an army of prayer warriors from our community were surrounding this one, small little boy.

A miracle for Christmas

After a full night on this new oxygen set up, he had improved, but still not enough to stay at this second hospital stop of our journey, and the decision was made to call the ambulance service to have us transferred to the open PICU facility on the island now that the weather had cleared.

As we were ready to roll out of the room for the trip—packed bag in my hand, my husband with instructions on how to follow us by ferry as soon as possible—the ambulance driver took a call.

He looked up at us with beaming eyes and said, “Well, it’s a Christmas miracle! We’re going to Children’s!”

Our whole room of family and nursing staff started crying because we’d been praying specifically for this since the talk of transferring us began. I felt that God moved a mountain for us in that moment and it still wells my eyes up with tears just thinking back on it.

On the ambulance drive from one hospital to the other—lights on this time—the driver looked at me as we got on one of the busiest bridges in the city and said, “They closed the center lane for us to cross quickly.”

I lost it again as the severity of the medical situation hit home. I cried tears of prayerful thankfulness for all the kind staff preparing the way for us and seeing my little boy had the best care.

Close care and attention

Even after the transfer, he was still needing extremely close eyes on his heart and lungs. The PICU nurses were amazing with both advocating for his care, and educating us with the ongoing changes in his state.

If you ever find yourself in an acute care need with a child, ask about being invited to the medical staff “rounds” so that you can hear all the observations and weigh in with any information specific to your child that might be helpful.

We found this such a blessing to be included, and also to just observe what close care and attention we were getting from each passing doctor and specialist that came into the room. They each bring their own experience and expertise and getting all those brains together on our son’s case was invaluable to his progress because he continued to respond to treatment in ways that led us all to believe he was doing better than his body truly was.

Forward motion

After about 24 hours in the PICU, we were moved to the general children’s inpatient care floor. My son continued to make slow and steady improvements, meeting the hoped for milestones in his own time.

We received a lot of information during our last few days in hospital regarding what had happened, and how we would need to proceed both in the hospital and at home. We spent another two nights in the children’s hospital, but they were full of rest and recuperation as the medications were weaned and the tubes and cords came off one by one.

After six nights, two ambulance transfers, four hospital rooms, and hundreds of prayers, our little man walked out of the hospital on his own two feet, in his favorite yellow rain boots. A sweet and emotional moment for us all.

And now that we’re home, I swear that his smile got even better, but maybe it’s just that much sweeter to see after a week without. <3

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I’d just like to end with my most sincere thank you to every medical professional who touched this case. You personally contributed to our Christmas miracle, and we are so grateful for you and the story that brought you into our path this year.

Please find me on Facebook or Instagram if you happened to find this post; I’d love to give you each a personal thanks.

And also thank you to every person in our community who prayed for us, sent us food or vouchers, brought us things from home, took our garbage out while we were away, offered us hotel points, encouraged or listened to us, and so much more. You amaze me. Our little family feels so blessed by you all.