Part 1: The Fevah
I am so so so exhausted, but I know I need to update some people on the situation here. Bear with me on grammar, sentence structure and whatnot. It's really late and I am really tired. I don't have the mental wherewithall to massage this into a decently-written post. {Note: the photo on this page is from Wednesday evening and was taken with my phone. Note all the tubes and wires and uncomfy things. Blecch}
The basic story is: We spent a few days in the hospital, but are home now and hopefully on the mend.
The Tolstoy is:
When we last saw our heroes, it was Sunday evening and they were in the throes of a 104 degree-fever-having-Pookie. The fever came down finally, the pediatrician was seen on Monday, and after blood tests, breathing tests, and some other tests our young heroine was not fond of, they were sent home with a scrip for some eye drops and instructed to puffy heart the Tylenol whenever necessary.
Part 2: The E.R.
Tuesday morning dawned, snowy and brilliant. I went on to work while DJ kept the leetle one. By all his reports, things were going well. She was eating, playing and chasing the dog as usual. I returned at lunch to trade places so DJ could hop on the bus with the basketball team for a game in Greeneville, SC (3 hours away - an important detail).
After lunch Pookie is tired and retires for her afternoon siesta. While she is napping I am folding clothes and hear a very strange noise on the baby monitor. Thinking it's malfunctioning, I go to mess with it and realize to my horror that the monitor is not the source of the grunting, rattling noise. That crackly, wrong, wonky noise is coming from my baby.
I dial up the pediatrician and speak with the nurse, thinking they'll have me bring her back in when she wakes up. Imagine my shock when she says, "Hang up the phone right now and take that baby to the ER." I call DJ's mother (a nurse), and hold the phone up to the monitor. Her response is the same: "ER. Now."
My brother is on his way to visit us, so I leave him a message taped to the door and set out. On the way to the main road I meet him, so we ditch his car on the side of the road and he piles in with us. Pookie is by this point so listless and glassy-eyed she doesn't even notice he is riding with us. Mommy is trying very hard not to panic as she sees this in the rear-view and hears the continued breathing struggle. Mommy also can't get in touch with daddy because his cell phone is dead, and finally calls someone else on the basketball trip to get a message to him.
We arrive at the ER, and I bundle the baby up in my jacket since she is just in the green-and-pink apple-print jammies she was wearing for her nap. In some strange, hysterical place in my mind I'm worried that she doesn't look "put together" and that I should have dressed her in something cuter.
The triage doctor sees us immediately, and Pookie begins to scream. She doesn't stop this wailing for approximately the next six hours. After his assessment (which I have to remove her non-put-together jammies for and I have no clue if they even made it home with us), the doctor hits all the buttons on the screen that are marked "urgent," and ushers me and my naked, sobbing baby from the triage room into a curtained ER exam room. {My brother will tell me later that Pookie's screams were so unnecessarily dramatic and staged-sounding that the initial rumblings of concern in the ER waiting room turned quickly into guffaws.}
Although we spent hours in the ER, this next part is all a blur to me. At some point they let my brother come back, and he accused me of being overly-worried and panicky. He stole my phone and left DJ a message that I was overreacting and that everything was fine. I got really pissed at him and told him that if he wasn't going to be helpful he could leave. This is the closest we've ever gotten to a fight.
But I wasn't overreacting this time, apparently. Pookie's oxygen levels were low and dipping (low 80s), her mouth was blue, and a breathing treatment was ordered. She screamed and screamed. It might be RSV or the flu, so a nasal test was ordered. She screamed and screamed. It might be pneumonia, so a chest x-ray was ordered. She screamed and screamed and I cried because the contraption they put her in to immobilize her for the scan reminded me every bit of the Iron Maidens of medieval torture. She screamed some more.
Then it got really bad.
They had to draw blood and put in an IV into her arm It took three fully-grown adults (one of them being me) to hold her still enough to get this done properly. All the nurses and doctors commented on how incredibly strong she was (and this was with serious breathing problems - they should see her on a normal day!) I thought she would never stop screaming unless she somehow managed to shred her throat with fury. We were both drenched with sweat and tears by the time it was done. {How the hell that nurse got that damn thing in there on the first try it I will never know. Kudos to her.}
Then they remembered that her fever was 103.5 and brought some Tylenol. To be honest, they put the syringe of medicine at the front of the room and left it for me to give her. Pooks was to the point where if she caught a glimpse of scrubs it would send her into all-new paroxysms of tears.
The doctor came and told us that they wanted a pediatric specialist to look at her, and that he would be there in "a while," and that he wanted Pookie to be admitted for a few days. I was crushed, and my brother was distraught that he'd poo-poohed my worry. And this whole time my husband was stuck, powerless to do anything at all, at a Ryan's Steakhouse in onlygodknowswhere, South Carolina.
I wrapped the baby in a blanket (she was still in just her diaper) and tried to calm her (and me) by reading the one book that was in her bag. It was an A-B-C tome and we took extra time with each letter, trying to fill the stressful yet somehow boring-as-crap moments waiting for the doctor. He finally arrived and did another exam, must like the 3 she'd already received in the past 24 hours. He asked the same questions, and I got the distinct feeling that the nurse-practitioner who initially saw Pooks on Monday might be in for one ass-chewing the next day.
The doctor told us that there was no pneumonia, no RSV, no flu, and that whatever was going on was likely bacterial in nature, and triggering asthma-like symptoms. He prescribed enough anti-biotics to cure Dumbo of a double ear infection and more and more and more breathing treatments. Then he told us that we'd be there at least 2 days, more if there wasn't marked improvement. Then he left with a sad little smile, and we were left to wait for a room to be readied for our arrival.
Part 3 coming up tomorrow. It is too late and I am too beat right now to start dredging up any more of the past three days' events.