Mycoplasma: The Pneumonia vs Juan || Mom Life

Mycoplasma pneumonia
This type causes lung infections. About a third of people who get infected come down with a mild form of pneumonia called "walking pneumonia." It is referred to as atypical pneumonia because most people, especially children, will get "tracheobronchitis," a fancy name for a chest cold. - WebMD.

Juan is a kid that I must give credit to my boobs almost never gets sick, why do I have to give credit to my boobs? Well, he was breastfed until February of this year and one of the main benefits of extended breastfeeding is it builds up the kid's immune system.

The few times he has gotten the cold I usually just call his insurance (we live in Venezuela and in here I will highly recommend getting insurance at least for your kids cause you don’t want to get sick and have to go to a public hospital) the doctors usually prescribe the same treatment of anti-allergenic and nebulizations, this usually gets rid of the cough and nasal congestion in 5 days top.

Almost 1 month with a cough

Juan has been taking the usual treatment for almost a month and he still had the cough and instead of getting better it actually got worse, he got attacks of cough where he even throw up because of that, his nasal congestion was full too and no matter how many nasal washes I did to him he would not get better. Not to mention he started to get a temperature.

This is when I decided to call the insurance again (hello if I'm paying I may as well use it) they ask for some lab work and some Rx, those first labs came back with a white cell count of 21K when a normal reading is in the 10K, that was super high and confirmed what we already knew the kid had an infection and this was not a simple cold.

The Rx showed his lungs were full of mucus and that meant we needed to move past the medical attention through the phone to a physical in a clinic medical exam, that is why we arrange a…

Medical Appointment

The insurance arranged for us to go see a pediatrician when we got there the clinic was not accepting the insurance 🫠 That was fun cause did I mention our car broke down and we had to go everywhere by public transportation and walking? Well yes, now imagine this kid who has his lungs full of mucus walking streets to get to places, he obviously got tired super quickly and we had to carry him around (he weighs 21Kg!).

The insurance told us to go to another clinic so by the time we got there, the kid had a fever and we had to be admitted through the ER, this turned the simple medical appointment into

A hospitalization

Yeah, this I have to again say I'm thankful I'm able to pay for the insurance I can not even begin to imagine what it would be like to have to go through this in a public hospital.

As soon as the doctors did the auscultation of the lungs and saw the labs and the Rx, they decided he needed to stay for intravenous treatment of antibiotics, as you can imagine Juan was not happy, especially when he learned that they needed to put in a line to pass through the medicine.

| his phone was the savior and what got him through those days at the clinic|
I didn’t take as many pictures of the whole process as I liked to because 1, I had to hold my kid down so that the nurse could put in the line, and 2. I suck as a content creator.

Anyways, the doctors asked for more labs cause we needed to know what was causing the infection to treat it right. And they had suspicions since the kid had been sick for so long.

Mycoplasma

The labs came back positive for these fun bacteria, which turns out is one that is hard to get rid and even tho you take intravenous treatment the symptoms can continue as if nothing is going through your veins. But hey at least we knew what he had and how to deal with it.

Turns out it's something that is highly contagious (even tho his dad and I don’t have it _yet) and is something that can't turn into a pretty serious pneumonia if not treated right.

I have to say the whole staff of nurses and doctors in the clinic were A+, super nice and playful with Juan and also with me and my boyfriend, the food for being hospital food was actually pretty yummy, Juan actually ate it and he is super picky so that shows how good it was.

After 48hours of hospitalization, we beg the doctor to let us go, Juan was like a caged animal in that room, he cried he wanted to go home how he missed his bed (ours cause he still sleeps with us lol), his cats, dog and his grandma he didn’t want to be in the clinic one more night and the doctor gave in. He said that we could carry on the treatment at home that way Juan could also benefit from breathing clean air and not hospital air.

In the clinic, Juan was getting intravenous antibiotics and hydro corticoids, the same but for a longer period of time was the treatment that the doctor sent home. He has to take 2 antibiotics, keep doing the nebulizations, take corticosteroids and keep rest at home for 14 days.

He is still showing symptoms, the cough is still present, he is not getting the attacks anymore, but is still pretty much present during the day, and he is still having nasal congestion, the one thing he is not getting anymore is the fever, this is also one of the main things the doctor let us go home, cause if he would still be having fever we would still be at the hospital.

Getting the Medicine

So, here is the fun part, the insurance is not perfect in every way, they do provide some medicines through their delivery system, but not all in fact not the most important ones, as well as the labs and Rx, they gave orders for some labs and especially the ones when he is hospitalized but if he is not, they give just 1 order per month which means the medicines they don't deliver and the labs they don't give orders to get in the authorized clinics, then we have to pay so they can reimburse to us 🥲 and not only are those things expensive AF like one of the antibiotics cost over 40$ but the insurance takes up to 1 month or month and a half to do the reimburse of those expenses (and to top it all they do those payments in Bolivares which as you may know SUCKS).

So currently I'm broke 😩 (again I'm looking for a job if you have any of any kind I'm willing and can start when you want me to!).

The routine is broken

Juan usually has preschool class in the morning and swimming practice in the afternoon, he can’t do either because of this Mycoplasma fun and he gets supper bored and wants to be on his phone all day watching youtube. So, is up to me obviously to try and keep him entertained but is NOT EASY! Specially cause the weather is not helping, raining all day and he can't get wet in the rain so we have to stay inside, I'm not very creative so I accept suggestions on ways to keep a pretty active 4 year old busy while at home sick.

I want to see him like this happy and healthy all the time.

As always, thank you for reading me, would love to read about your own experience on this, so please leave a comment or better yet, make a post in The Motherhood Community.

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