“He was just fighting so hard to get a breath, you could see through his sweater and through his blankets that his chest and stomach were rising a lot trying to get a breath,” said Tyler’s mother, Kerry Graham. on CTV News Toronto. 
A month ago, in the middle of the night, she decided to take him to Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital.  Within 36 hours, Tyler’s case had escalated to the point where doctors were not leaving his side as they tried to find him an intensive care unit (ICU) bed.
“His oxygen levels were so low they thought the machine was really broken,” Graham said.
RSV is a common respiratory virus that particularly affects young children.  The infection is steadily increasing across Canada at a time when pediatric hospital beds are stretched thin.
After two rounds of phone calls to hospitals across the province, Tyler’s doctors were ready to send him to a hospital in Buffalo.
But at the last minute, an ICU bed became available 150km away at the Children’s in London Health Sciences Centre.
For two weeks, Tyler was attached to a ventilator in a London hospital.  “It’s really hard to watch your son get used to having oxygen in his face,” Graham said.
It was on his third birthday, October 28, that he was discharged and sent home.  “This was the first morning we saw him without oxygen masks,” he added.
In response to Tyler’s story, Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones said Thursday, “Let’s be clear, this patient you’re referring to did receive care here in Ontario.”
For over a week, Ontario’s pediatric ICUs have been operating beyond capacity.
Graham said it would be “terrifying” if Tyler’s virus had been released now into today’s pediatric hospitals.
“To think if I went to a hospital in the state that it was … I had to fight them, so I can’t even imagine what’s going on right now.”
A week ago, 122 children in Ontario were seeking intensive care – 10 patients over the province’s capacity.  A day later, on November 11, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children said the ICU had been 127 per cent over capacity for several days.
On Thursday, 114 children were in provincial ICUs – two patients over capacity.
Jones said the province recently increased their pediatric capacity by 30 per cent.
But Critical Care Services Ontario’s daily count shows pediatric bed capacity was unchanged from last month, when three beds were added across the province, bringing the total to 112.
Before that, the most recent capacity expansion of the pediatric ICU took place on July 26, when four beds were added.