Mountain Clams

She's sick, I'm tired. Together we're...

She's sick, I'm tired. Together we're in the hospital. (Note that this was written last Thursday, but I did not have internet connectivity at the time.)

Last Friday, Erika woke up in the morning with a pretty high fever - 103 degrees or so. I called the doctor's office and made an appointment. They fit her in that morning. At the doctor's office, her symptoms were described a couple times. Vitals were taken which not only corroborated her story, but found also that her blood pressure was really low. The doctor told me to take her over to the emergency room. So I did.

We arrived at the emergency room to a parking lot with only empty parking space. I was hoping the wait wouldn't be that long. As we were walking towards the entrance, I noticed a sign that told patients to proceed to the main entrance. We started to walk in that direction when someone from the E.R. came out the ambulance entrance and walked us in that way instead. Apparently, they had a water line break right over the emergency room waiting area. Once inside, they knew Erika by name since her regular doctor called ahead to let them know we were on our way.

We went straight into a room where she was poked and prodded, taking enough blood for some cultures, and given an IV. She received fluids and an antibiotic. Once the antibiotic infusion was done, we were sent home as long as we promised to return the next day for another infusion. The IV was left in her arm and wrapped to prevent it from being yanked around. On Saturday, Erika and I ran some errands, including washing the truck, getting her some new glasses, and eating lunch. After lunch, we went up to the hospital and she got her second dose of IV antibiotics and a second round of blood cultures.

On Sunday, her temperature once again spiked into the "killing brain cells" zone, so we once again returned to the ER, where she once again provided a blood sample for cultures, and received an IV antibiotic. By now, she has been stuck by needles 4-5 times, and if you know Erika, you know she would rather slam her fingers in a door than get stuck by a needle.

Monday rolls around, and Erika is not feeling too well. I took her temperature and it was just about normal, so I went to work and left her at home to rest. When I returned at 6 PM, she looked very flushed and somewhat disoriented. I took her temperature with the digital under-the-tongue thermometer. It read 104 degrees. I was stunned! So just in case the thermometer was lying to me, I got out the digital stick-it-in-your-ear thermometer and tried again. This one read 103.5 degrees. So I called the on-call physician to see what she would recommend. As you probably can guess, we made our fourth trip to the ER in four days, where she gave a blood sample, got an IV and got another dose of antibiotics. A chest x-ray was also taken, but turned out negative.

Around 9:00 Tuesday night, we got a call from the ER doctor saying that one of her blood cultures turned up positive, and that we should take her right away to the hospital. No, not that hospital, the other hospital that's another 20 minutes from your house, where she'll be admitted and watched more closely. So I threw together a bag of stuff for her, one for me, and we drove over to the emergency room. The emergency room admittance nurse knew her by name and sent her straight up to the pediatric ward where she got her own little room and bed. And when I say little, I mean little. There's barely enough room to walk around the side of the bed with all the stuff in this room. The bed is the focal point, as you might expect. Around it are two tables, two chairs, an IV stand, a sink, the door to the bathroom, a closet and a computer station bolted to the wall. The first order of business: stick another IV in her. We've both lost count of how many times needles have pierced her skin and dug around looking for yet another vein that hasn't packed up and moved to her kidneys.

Test after test, fluid after fluid, and pill after pill, not a lot of progress was made. A chest x-ray was taken on Wednesday, and another on Thursday. This series of x-rays showed a progression of "something" in her lungs, which is never a good thing. Lungs are for air, not "somethings." Thursday afternoon, she was wheeled down to the OR where another in the whirlwind of doctors performed a brachioscopy, taking a scope and looking around in her lungs. Samples were taken for culture, and some saline was thoughtfully left behind for her to cough out after she woke up from the anesthesia.

On Thursday, she was put on a couple new antibiotics with more difficult-to-pronounce names, but her breathing is a little deeper than it was earlier in the day when she was panting somewhere around 80 times per minute. She's back down under 60 again now.

Labels: kids, medical

posted by Brett @ 1:42 AM