Vonage 911 service DOES work!
Whew, what a night we had with Pablo. The boy has had the worst cough. It’s just relentless. He’s been coughing for over a week now, and yesterday, it seemed like he was doing better. He really didn’t cough much all day. Around dinnertime, though, he started to cough, and then he couldn’t STOP. He coughed violently for almost two straight hours, literally without stopping for more than a few seconds. He coughed until he vomited three different times. And we tried everything to get him to stop – we gave him water, we gave him juice, we gave him a saline neb treatment. We gave him cough medicine. We rubbed Vicks on him. We gave him albuterol in his nebulizer. It all seemed to make him WORSE!
Paul and I decided that one of us should take him to the ER, since he couldn’t seem to get his coughing or his breathing under control. I called Kaiser and they transferred me to a nurse at Children’s Hospital. She listened to him over the phone and said we should hang up and call 911 and have paramedics assess his breathing before bringing him in, since we live about 20 miles from the hospital and it would be a fairly long trip for him in that condition. So that’s what we did. And of course, it’s a nice Sunday night, and all our neighbors are outside hanging out and playing and stuff, and a firetruck and ambulance came to our house with lights and everything. I was worried for a minute how that was going to go, since we have Vonage VOIP phone service, and it’s been said that their 911 service sometimes doesn’t work. I guess they got our address noted correctly, because we had paramedics at our house four minutes after I called. That’s nice to know, in case we ever have a real, life threatening emergency.
So the paramedics came in and evaluated Pablo. They advised us to transport him in the ambulance, and of course, that was an issue since one of us had to ride in the ambulance and one of us had to drive. Kayley had to step up and be a real big girl last night and take all the girls upstairs and put them to bed and wait for grandma to come over and stay with her. We had our neighbor and his wife come over and hang out for the fifteen minutes or so it took for my mom to get there, so she wasn’t alone. Still, I know she was freaked out and scared for Pablo.
In the ambulance, the paramedic gave Pablo another albuterol treatment, and he coughed violently the entire time. We stopped that and she put an oxygen mask on him, and within a minute or so, he stopped coughing for the first time in hours. A few minutes later, he fell asleep in my arms. I’m starting to wonder if he’s developed some allergy or something to the albuterol? We got to the ER and had doctors waiting for us, and as they checked Pablo out, he seemed to be calming right down. So, it was a whole lot of drama, for nothing really. We sat in the ER for hours, waiting around for the doctor, who really couldn’t tell us anything. They did a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia and to rule out something being caught in his windpipe. He doesn’t have either one of those things going on. We were starting to worry about pneumonia because he was running a low-grade fever. They wrote us up a prescription for cough medicine with codeine, and we were on our way home at about 1 a.m.
On the way home, Pablo started coughing again. We put him to bed and he coughed for about 20 minutes, and then fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion, I’m assuming. It’s so incredibly frustrating, not being able to help him, and not having medical professionals be able to do a damned thing for him, either.
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Laura, also known as LaLaGirl, is the mother of a teenager and two young sets of twins. She's happily married, loves living in Colorado, and writes almost daily about married life, raising multiples, and parenting a child with autism.
Questions? Just 
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:07 am
Oh man Laura
I’m assuming you are to follow up with the pediatrician. I wonder if there is some kind of blockage in his airway, since the oxygen helped so much. {{Pablo and family}}
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:07 am
Oh I forgot to say. We have Vonage also, and I always wondered the same exact thing! I’m glad it worked.
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:20 am
Oh my goodness, poor little Pablo! What a terrifying experience.
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:52 am
Oh Laura! I’m so sorry, hon! {{{{{Pablo&family}}}}}
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:59 am
That sounds almost exactly how Ethan gets after he has had an asthma attack. He will cough until he throws up and fall asleep from sheer exhaustion of coughing. He spent a whole week in the hospital with oxygen tube on the last time it happened.
Hopefully it was a fluke occurrence and doesn’t continue for Pablo
Poor little guy. It is so hard when they are coughing and wheezing like that because there is just nothing you can do and you just want to give them some air.
Give Pablo a big squeeeze
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Oh no, poor little guy! My first thought was asthma. I hope that he is feeling better.
And it’s kind of funny about calling 911. I have Vonage, too, and I had to call 911 last week. The smoke alarms would not stop going off. Anyway, I was afraid that it wouldn’t work but it did!
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I started tearing up reading this. How is he today? Did you go to the doctors? Poor Pablo.
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Aw, Poor little Pablo! I hope he gets better soon!
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Poor sweetheart! Is he feeling any better? Do you need anything?
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Wow! That’s got to be scary! Maybe your pediatrician can get to the bottom of it!
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:46 pm
I am so sorry about last night! I hope Pablo is doing better soon. Poor baby! I know you had to be scared. My 18 year old had to go to the emergency room nearly a year ago with symptoms of appendicitis. We were there 10 hours, and she ended up not having to have surgery. I know how scared we were. Hugs to you and Pablo!
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Poor baby. I hate when kids are sick. They are so pitiful.
July 23rd, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Sorry to hear about Pablo! I just went through the same thing with Jackson! We ended up in the dr office 3 times in a week and FINALLY they gave him a steriod to overcome the cough and we bought a humidifier that does large areas for the front living room and a small one for his room! Hope he feels better soon! I know how frusterating it is to not be able to stop the cough!
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:00 pm
so scary. my brother in law had childhood asthma so bad that his parents moved one block from the hospital in case of an emergency. now my niece has it but not as severe. it’s super scary. i hope he gets through this soon.
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Oh Laura! I am so sorry! Poor little guy! He looks so brave in the picture though! Hope he is feeling better today!
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Oh my! What a scare. Thank goodness he’s okay.
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:40 pm
I’m so glad the Vonage worked. I also hope Pablo doesn’t have the coughing fits any more. Poor little guy.
July 24th, 2007 at 6:03 am
Oh Man – poor little guy. I am glad he (and you) got some sleep finally. How scary for you. Hugs~
July 24th, 2007 at 8:27 am
Oh, Laura! I’m so sorry for Pablo.
Is he asthmatic? Meredith has asthma, and her doctor has been adamant that she NEVER have cough medicine. Do you have to follow up with his pediatrician?
July 24th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Wow….that must have been scary for all of you….poor baby.
Hope his cough is going away and you can figure out the right treatment for it.
July 24th, 2007 at 11:39 am
I am glad Pablo is ok. So scary!
I always wondered about 911 with Vonage!
July 24th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
I am so glad that Pablo is okay! That is so scary. Give Kayley some extra hugs for me too. Such a brave thing to do!
July 24th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Awww. Bless hi little heart! Breathing stuff is SO scary with little ones. Sky was hospitalised for 5 days with pneumonia as a toddler and it tore me up to see her struggle to breathe. Hang in there. Hope he’s feeling better soon!
July 24th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Poor Pablo! Why do you think he might have an allergy towards the albuterol? How is he doing now? I hope he’s doing better! H has had pneumonia and now asthma and uses a nebulizer daily. Hugs!
July 25th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Poor little guy. What a scary night for all of you! I sure hope he’s feeling better and they figure out what caused it!
July 26th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
OMG I saw the flickr photo and knew he was in the hospital. You must have posted from your phone (the photo). I sure hope he is feeling better!!