15 months old and a trip to the ER

Today Maya turned 15 months old! Can't believe my baby is getting so big! I still get to call her a baby because we still get to hold her so much like a baby. For this special occasion, Maya got to make a trip to Texas Childrens Hospital. She had began a cold on Saturday morning I noticed. We went to the pediatrician's office and had her oxygen level tested just in case and it was fine. She wasn't too bad and we thought it was a little headcold. By Saturday night though her nose was running, she had a slight fever and she was sneezing and trying to cough every few minutes. Charlie and I were having dinner while Nani and Grandpa were babysitting and they even told us to come home. She sounded and looked awful. Even though it was getting late, we needed to get back to our house because we had the nebulizer there. We tried the nebulizer, which she hated of course, and were able to give her about 30 seconds. Better than nothing. She was so tired and out of energy so we didn't attempt it again. She had a terrible night and cried a lot and coughed. At around 6 we started thinking about who we should call to get more advice what to do with her. We really needed to check her lungs out and get her oxygen level reading but it was Sunday. An hour later Maya was up and crying. We checked her fever and gave her Tylenol. Gave her some juice too and tried to put her back to sleep. A few minutes after she finished drinking her juice, she started gagging and choking. She finally was able to spit up the juice and some mucous. She did that a couple of times and we were so scared. Just kept thinking, breathe, Maya, breathe. Finally she stopped gagging and took a breath. We decided to go to the hospital at this point and call the doctors on the way. We knew it was just a cold, but have been told that SMA patients have a real hard time when they are sick. Their lungs are just not strong enough to have a strong cough - enough to clear mucous effectively. At the ER, the doctor listened to her lungs and checked her oxygen levels. All was fine and said she had an upper resp infection and it could be a virus. He said that she likely choked on her mucous and that was causing her to spit up, and not what we were thinking, which was aspiration. Told us to hydrate her and go home. As we were giving her juice, she did it again - gagged, choked, spit up. This time all the grandparents saw too how scary it is. The ER doctor came in again and said she was ok. I called the pulmonary dr just in case they didn't want to see her. All in all, all the doctors said we made the right decision to come to the ER given her situation. However next time, the ER doctor wants us to wait until she is breathing really fast before panicking - sorry, but he had NO idea what this is like. Honestly, we will do it all over again if it means we can have Maya taken care of. We may try to hire a nurse anytime Maya gets sick now to stay with us and help manage her breathing. The equipment we will have soon will help but it has to be used constantly all day when she is sick. It would be nice to have a licensed professional here in our house during these times.