Update PICU day 5

Well, yet again we took steps backward. Serena again needed more O2 throughout the night. This is so typical, and yet it makes the Drs hestitant to wean her during the day, so it is a perpetual cycle of her seeming to look better, doing worse at night, and we are plateauing again. At night, your breathing gets more shallow. You take smaller breaths and your lower lungs don't expand and contract as much, moving less air through. Normally, this isn't a problem, however, with a child like Serena, whose airways are already compromised, not expanding the lower lungs makes a situation where she doesn't move enough oxygen and she needs more supplimental oxygen to keep her sats up.
I talked to the nurse this morning and she said she still sounds really coarse. She said, "she was so sick by the time she got up here. I really thought she was going to code." That's exactly what I thought, and it is so scary to think how close Serena came to needing to be revived, and put on life support.
The part that frustrates me is we came into the ER at 3pm. She was not brought up to the Pedi floor (not even ICU) until 11pm. Then she stayed there for an hour, when they realized she needed much more support, and brought her to the PICU, and within 20 minutes she gave out, and stopped breathing...which was when she needed to be bagged and treated aggressively with medications and breathing treatments.
The question is...why did they keep her in the ER so long without much support, allowing her to "tire out?" I guess they didn't see how sick she was there, because she seemed pretty okay with only 1 liter of regular O2 and breathing treatments every 2-3hours. They really thought she was just coming to the Pedi floor for observation throughout the night, but instead here we are day 5 of the Intensive Care Unit, and she is barely making any consistant forward strides toward getting better. The nurse said 2 weeks in the PICU is typical for kids as sick as Serena. :(
I can't believe she got as sick as she did, and so quickly. We are always on top of the kid's health, and she just turned for the worse on Monday, and even looked "better" than she was based on what I wrote above about how long they kept her in the ER and didn't have her admitted upstairs to the Unit. It was like the virus was hiding out, waiting for the moment to attack, and now she is so tight and coarse in her lungs, it is going to take a long time to recover. We still don't know what cold virus this is, as all the results are still negative. It's just a nasty cold that took hold of her already sick and scarred lungs.
So we're still here. Not much has changed. Same amount of O2, breathing treatments every hour. Not much improvment, although she is looking much better. She looked like death on Monday and Tuesday according to the nurse...yeah no kidding, she almost coded in my arms.
Get better baby girl.