We Downplay a Lot of These Diseases — Ivar’s Story
We want the best health outcomes possible for all North Dakotans, and we believe when our neighbors share their stories with others, it helps all of us identify and address the barriers affecting our own communities. This is the story of Siri Thaden’s son Ivar, who was hospitalized three times as an infant after contracting RSV.
“There is nothing scarier than seeing your child not breathe for what feels like a long time, even though it’s just a few seconds.”
- Siri Thaden
Siri Thaden’s second pregnancy was somehow even easier than the first, and after her son Ivar was born, mom and baby were discharged from the hospital earlier than expected. He was born a full week past his due date in November 2022.
Ivar is Siri’s youngest, and during her maternity leave her oldest son, Ole, then two years old, continued going to daycare. And as any parent knows, daycare for toddlers means socialization, lots of learning and playtime … and germs.
“There’s a new flavor of the week every week,” Siri told us. “It’s always something. There’s constantly a new bug they’re getting.”
Siri and her husband are no strangers to infant illness. Ole contracted COVID-19 when he was just three months old during the peak of the pandemic. So when he came home from daycare around Thanksgiving in 2022 with a case of the sniffles, she didn’t think much of it, because she’d already seen the worst. She’s also a nurse for Sanford Health, so she knows that more often than not, colds and viruses tend to run their course with rest at home. She and her husband did their best to keep their two boys separated to prevent four-week-old Ivar from catching the same bug.
“Part of my naivety was coming from that experience of having Ole get the most dreaded illness, COVID-19, this very feared thing, to now he’s coming home with some sniffles. You can try to tell a toddler to stay away from their little brother, but unless you’re going to keep them in a bubble, there’s no real way to keep them apart.”
Ivar eventually developed minor symptoms: some nasal congestion plus a low-grade temperature. Around day five, however, his temperature began to spike, and Siri took him to the hospital to get him checked out. There, his vitals and oxygen level were stable, but doctors opted to run some tests given his age and the fact that North Dakota was in the pit of an especially bad flu and RSV season.
The tests confirmed it: Ivar had RSV.
“I knew RSV was bad, but we’d weathered COVID with Ole, who’d gotten that and pulled through fine,” Siri says. “And as a nurse in the medical field, unless your kid’s limb is hanging off, we tend to not panic too much! So when the doctor said RSV, I really underestimated it.”
Ivar was stable enough to be sent home, and the ER doctor assured Siri that most RSV cases resolve themselves without major issues. But within a day, Ivar’s temperature had jumped to 105 degrees, and Siri and her husband began to notice he had longer-than-normal pauses between breaths.
“There is nothing scarier than seeing your child not breathe for what feels like a long time, even though it’s just a few seconds,” she said.
When Siri brought Ivar back to the hospital, it was already overrun with RSV and other respiratory patients. She sat with her son for 12 hours waiting for a room to open up so Ivar could be admitted. She didn’t know at the time that this hospital visit would become one of three. Ivar would later be hospitalized that following spring and again in June. Each time, Siri and her family thought they were out of the woods.
“We did everything we could to be careful, but within less than a month, it was the same thing again.”
Ivar continues to be impacted by RSV nearly a year after his initial diagnosis, and as Siri looks ahead to her son’s future, she can’t help but worry about how the illness he first had as an infant will affect him long-term."
“Every single time he gets a cold, it goes to his lungs until he’s wheezing and breathing heavily. It’s scary, because you don’t know if this is going to be the time he needs to be hospitalized again,” Siri says. “And that does break your heart as a parent. I don’t want him to be limited in what he can do. I want him to have the ability to run and play and do sports as he gets older. In conversations with his pulmonologist, we’ve learned that some kids grow out of it, and some don’t. And there’s no way of knowing. As a parent, you’re so out of control when it comes to the repercussions of RSV.”
The RSV vaccine wasn’t yet available for pregnant people when Siri was expecting back in 2022, or after Ivar was born. She’s glad that others now have the chance to protect their young children, so families don’t have to go through what hers did.
“While we didn’t have the opportunity to get the vaccine at the time that he was going through all of this, it is so exciting for me to see that [my younger sisters' kids] will have the opportunity to get this vaccine to prevent these things,” she told us. “You don’t want to have to look back and think to yourself, ‘I wish I would’ve done that. It was such a simple thing.’”
Siri sympathizes with parents who are making immunization decisions for their children and urges them to truly consider the risks of not vaccinating.
“Just because I’m a nurse doesn’t mean I don’t have my own questions and concerns and fears,” she says. “But I’ll say this: Going through all of this, we really downplay a lot of these diseases. I think I downplayed RSV, especially after going through COVID-19 with my older son. When we see a new RSV vaccine coming out that has been researched for years and years and years, we almost think there is no downside to not getting the vaccine. We’re under that false belief of, ‘Well, if they get sick, they’ll fight it, because they have a strong immune system.’ But the damage that RSV has done to Ivar’s lungs, I don't know what that’s going to look like for him long-term. This isn’t some experiment we’re doing on our kids. This is a vaccine that’s been studied. So when looking at the risk vs. the benefit, parents really need to understand the risk of not getting vaccinated.”
If you have a story about how an illness or disease has impacted your life, we want to hear from you. Share your story with us here. It could help your neighbors — and create a healthier North Dakota for all of us.