SAN ANTONIO – Across the country, hospitals are filling up with children fighting respiratory illnesses.
Here in San Antonio, local hospitals are facing rising numbers of the flu, rhinovirus, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus.
“You’re still a mom, and your heart always goes to your child first. She scared me,” Lori Tapia said.
Tapia is a mom of three and what started a cough in her 5-month-old daughter escalated to so much more… RSV.
“I went home, and then that’s when she kind of just started to rapidly decline. By about 11 a.m., she wasn’t really eating anymore, and then what she did eat was all coming right back up,” Tapia said.
Tapia says her daughter went from home care to urgent care to the emergency room.
“She decompensated very quickly; when she started to get most of the symptoms from the virus, she went out very quickly. So I brought her here, and they put her on oxygen and decided to keep her,” Tapia said.
However, Tapia said the illness wouldn’t back down.
“After they admitted her, she just kept getting worse and worse,” Tapia said.
It’s a situation families across the country are facing.
“It’s a national issue with a lot of the hospitals are dealing with a high number of pediatric cases. And so we actually have conversations about how to collaborate among the hospitals locally. But nationally that’s a problem because again, children are getting sick and many of those are being hospitalized,” Dr. Bryan Alsip with University Health said.
As for Tapia’s family, after time in the hospital, finally, 5-month-old Ariella was able to breathe on her own.
She was able to leave the hospital. However, that didn’t mean the battle was over.
“If she gets worse again, bring her back because she’s not on oxygen anymore,” Tapia said.
After two weeks, Ariella is better.
“For babies, it can be very, very detrimental because they don’t have the immune system that we have, and they don’t have the reserve that we have as far as respiratory system goes. And so it can hurt them very quickly,” Tapia said.
As local hospitals report high numbers of flu cases and the winter months approach, they urge the public to get the flu shot as a precaution.