More and more children battling RSV, Montreal emergency rooms overflowing
Posted October 27, 2022 4:34 pm.
Last Updated October 27, 2022 6:32 pm.
Just under two months since the birth of Montrealer Romeo Bernier, he and his family are back in the hospital. He fell sick with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) on October 18.
“His condition was decreasing and he started ‘pulling,’ he was exhausting himself by breathing,” said Romeo’s father, Christophe Bernier. “When we saw that, we had a contact, that said we don’t have to wait. You have to go right away to the hospital.”
He was admitted to the Montreal Children’s Hospital on October 20.
“The worst thing is when you step in the room and you see your kid with two doctors, three nurses are on him and he has tubes in his nose to help him to breathe, it’s heartbreaking,” said Bernier.
“He was in the ICU, needed ventilatory support,” said pediatric infectious diseases specialist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, Dr. Christos Karatzios. “Now he’s on my floor with high pressure oxygen going into his nose to keep his lungs open, and it’s day eight now and he’s still working hard.”
The ordeal has been a “scary situation” for the Bernier and his family.
“Its really stressful because you always want the best for your kids,” he said. “You are powerless facing this situation and like you can do nothing.”
Cases of RSV are surging across Canada – Quebec with the highest positivity rate of 13 per cent.
READ MORE: Soaring RSV rates in parts of Quebec lead national cases, strain hospital staff
“I had it about two weeks ago. Children are back in school right now,” said Dr. Karatzios. “It’s usually children and especially younger children, babies and neonates that get infected very badly with this virus.
“As the name implies, it causes inflammation in the respiratory tract and it causes fusion of the cells of the lining of the respiratory tract. By doing this, they produce a lot of mucus and there’s a lot of airway plugging and children have a very difficult time breathing through that.”
The surge in cases is jamming Montreal emergency rooms.
“It’s quite crazy. I’m manning the wards right now, one of the wards and I’ve got upwards of 20-something patients,” said Dr. Karatzios. “Beds are completely full.”
Baby Romeo is occupying one of those beds.
“We’ve got him feeding through a through a tube in his stomach so he doesn’t aspirate as he’s breathing hard to to drink,” Dr. Karatzios said. “And it’s just patience.”
His father is hopeful he’s on the mend.
“He’s getting better,”: he said. “You can you can see it, you can feel it.”
The family is now eager to get back home.
“It’s going to be a good thing just to go back to the normal life and take a little rest all of the family together.”
