Midnight Run

We have another medical adventure to add to the record books. Christa, Carly and I headed up to Tahoe for the weekend as we typically do during the winter. With more big snow storms on the way we were ready for some powder therapy in the mountains. On Friday night Carly had a cough that kept her, and us, up all night. In the morning the cough subsided and she looked better so we headed to Alpine Meadows to meet our babysitter and hit the slopes. The snow was knee to thigh deep and we had a great morning, but when we came in at lunch Carly did not look good and seemed to be having an adrenal crisis (low cortisol.) We gave her a cortisol shot and she started to look better but her breathing was still very labored so we took her to the ER in Truckee for an exam. They didn't like how she looked either and they wanted her to be seen by pediatric specialists at the children's hospital in Reno. Christa and Carly were loaded into an ambulance and with lights and sirens blazing they were rushed down to Reno while I followed in our car. The team in Reno placed a central IV (which was tricky) and took blood labs. The early lab results did not show an obvious cause for the labored breathing, and they felt that Carly would be best cared for at UCSF where she is well-known.

By 10:30pm Christa and Carly were being loaded into another ambulance and taken to the Reno airport where a small, four seat airplane was waiting to transport them to San Francisco. The plane was tiny and Christa had to sit in the co-pilot seat while the nurses tended to Carly in the back. There was a massive storm system in the area and they had a harrowing one hour flight through 100 mph winds and snow to San Francisco airport where a final ambulance waited to take them to UCSF. During this time I made the 4.5 hour drive (through snow and heavy rain) from Reno back to San Francisco, finally arriving at the hospital around 3:30am. There was a lot of activity around Carly most of the early morning, and things finally settled down around 8am.

It looks like Carly has a lung infection that is most likely viral. After some respiratory therapy and coughing her breathing has improved considerably today and she is smiling and eating well. The virus will likely take several days to pass and she will need to stay in the hospital until the doctors are comfortable sending her home, but after the progress we have seen today that could happen pretty quickly. It was a crazy day and we are short on sleep, but seeing Carly smile makes us feel much better already.