Pneumonia, Gastritis???

A week of illness and I'm still not really sure what Justin had, I'm just grateful he's finally back to his old self.  It all started last Saturday when J and Nathan started coughing and had runny noses.  On Sunday J developed a fever which subsided Monday but came back Wednesday.  So when he woke up with a fever Thursday morning I took him to the Dr. and Dr. Hirsch thought she heard some wheezing so she gave him a breathing treatment and sent us for an x-ray.  After reviewing the x-ray she diagnosed him with pneumonia.  I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and for her to tell me I had to take him to the hospital, but instead she sent J home on antibiotics and breathing treatments every 4 hours.  She also gave instructions to immediately take him to Children's if his fever increased and he started throwing up.  Thursday evening he got worse so we packed up and headed to the hospital.

I checked the waiting time on line and it gave an estimated wait time of 48 minutes and when we got there the waiting room was jam packed.  The ONLY upside to having a preemie is that you're taken pretty seriously so fortunately we didn't wait long (5 minutes) to be taken back to a room.  I wish the same could be said of our actual ER stay, we spent 6 hours there while they ran a ton of tests and took more x-rays.  Fortunately everything came back negative: no flu, no RSV, chest x-ray was clear, blood count was normal.  But the tests did show that J was dehydrated so they started an IV.  And the Dr. didn't like J's cough so she gave him another breathing treatment, along with Zofran for the vomiting. 

The only thing I was perplexed about was the fact that the x-ray taken at the hospital was clear.  Granted I didn't see the one taken that evening, but I saw the x-ray taken at Dr. Hirsch's office earlier in the day and I clearly saw patches in his lungs.  The nurse at the hospital even said that it sounded like J had left lung pneumonia.  But the Dr. at Children's diagnosed J with gastritis (an irritation of the stomach lining due to infection, stress, certain foods or medicines) and sent him home on breathing treatments.  I spoke with Dr. Hirsch Friday afternoon, after she had gotten the final report back from radiology, and she said that the radiologist's findings were inconclusive and had given a 50/50 diagnosis of pneumonia so she said to continue with the antibiotics and breathing treatments.  J's fever finally broke Friday evening and thankfully hasn't come back. This whole thing was pretty scary and took me back to the last time J was diagnosed with pneumonia:  blood gas', saturation levels, breathing treatments; it was all very overwhelming.