ER Has Been Moved to Monday Night

Did you miss me? Not that I've been gone that long, but I envision my few faithful bloggy fans haunting my site several times per hour just wishing a new post to magically appear. I know, I'm delusional. But you can humor me, at least, and pretend along with me that it's you that I'm talking about.

So anywhoo... I really thought we were on the tail end of The Great Month of Sickness here at the Land of Never Ending Drama. Becky so kindly passed her wickedly sore throat along to her brothers because apparently the kids do listen when I tell them to share. Luke was home one day with it and had a miraculous recovery, which made me realize that he really didn't get it at all. I'm ever so grateful. Josh had it bad, poor kid. He's the one that's been most sick. He missed a day of school on Monday. Wait, that was yesterday. Yep, he missed school yesterday, but I didn't bother to take him to the DR because I knew what it was, or wasn't, and knew they'd tell me the same thing they told me when I had Becky in twice. So I said "I'm sorry" and drowned him in cold meds while shoving cough drops down his throat. He went back to school today so I'm grateful that he got over it quicker than Becky did, even though he isn't as fast a healer as Luke. He needs to work on that.

But Micah came down with it just before bed on Sunday evening. We medicated him as best we could, but he's a tough nut to crack. He's our 4th, remember, so we've had experience in medicating unwilling children. And we have more dogs than any sane person should, so that's even more experience in forcing unwilling parties to partake of much needed medication. But between the combined efforts of Sam and I, we usually manage to wear more sticky liquid than Micah actually swallows. It's difficult to re-dose since you never know exactly how much he ingested, so we usually say "oh, well, we tried," and call it a dose.

A dog was up barking for 2 hours Sunday night, which had me up. (Dumb, dumb dogs. But we'll talk about them another day.) While I was up, I heard breathing louder than my own angered laboring breaths. And it was 2 doors down. Not good, but he was sleeping and I strongly follow the advice of letting sleeping dogs lie. No matter how many legs the dog has. Micah woke yesterday morning gasping for air, but since he immediately popped in a movie and requested breakfast I figured it couldn't have been as bad as it sounded. Plus I had someone coming to pick up a puppy late in the morning and couldn't leave. (Don't worry, I've already blown Mom of the Year, so you can just keep chalking these up for me. It isn't even fazing me anymore. I've embraced the fact that I'm a bad mom, and obviously you should, too.)

After the puppy left I realized that he should probably have a breathing treatment but I didn't have medication for the nebulizer. And I knew better than to ask for some over the phone without being seen. I made an appointment for the afternoon. And as things always go, he couldn't have sounded better when he was in there. Not only was he not gasping, wheezing, hoarse and croupy, but he had the infinite nerve to sound perfectly fine and run around like a loon. I am eternally grateful to my pediatrician's office for believing me (and thinking that I'm a nurse despite telling them otherwise several times) and just giving me what I request, no matter what. So I came home and attempted to medicate him. Between me holding him down and me trying to administer a form of medication, he freaked out. This did not do good things for his already swollen and congested airways. I'm telling you here and now the kid was turning blue. I stopped treatment and tried calming him as best as I could, but his chest was heaving in and out desperately trying to get enough air through to fill his lungs. Scary was an understatement for both him and I.

After Sam came home, as I was making supper, he had another attack of sorts. He'd fallen asleep, but woke up choking on stuff that he couldn't cough up and couldn't swallow down. The wild arm flailing and terrified look in his eye was enough for us to drop everything and rush him to the ER. Sam called ahead to see what doctors were working, and was disappointed to find that the slowest ones were there. He said we'd wait forever to be seen. I was mentally deciding if calling 911 from the emergency room would be worse than physically standing in my chair and screaming that I'd call the hospital administrator if my son didn't get treatment immediately. And I so would have done these, too. Remember, I'm an advocate for this small son of mine. Nobody pushes me with him.

It turns out that I had to do neither of these things, and I know my husband is eternally grateful. Our hospital now triages before check-in and in the triage room the nurse said "he's having difficulty breathing. He needs seen immediately." So I didn't even check in but was rushed to a room and treatment was commenced. It's good to know that hospitals recognize need over wait time. But we'd already crossed the line and there was no turning back. One treatment leads to another, then blood tests, and chest x-rays, and more blood tests, and an IV. And five and a half hours later we were shown to our own private suite for the night. I seriously thought of fighting this, but realized it was better than going home and having another attack. What would I have done with him in the middle of the night if he couldn't breathe? I gratefully accepted their offer of a room, and slept in a too-narrow twin size bed with my little boy right beside me, with tubes and wires entwining us together. Well, I didn't sleep. I napped for a few minutes each hour. And I'm at the non-functioning end of the spectrum today.

It turns out that not only does he have the wicked sore throat thing the others do, but is incubating pneumonia as well. It's the very earliest stages but we caught it and he's on medication for that as well. Steriods were prescribed for the throat since his airways are so small and get blocked so quickly. And the doctor (who thinks I'm a nurse) gave me twice the dose needed upon my request because that way we'll have extra to give him when he spits it out all over us.

The doctor once told me that they love large families like ours. We're their bread and butter since we pass things on to each other. I loved hearing that I was essentially making her Lexus payment, when we can't afford to replace our 16 year old Cavalier. Here's hoping that this is the last of the nasty stuff for several months and the doctor has her Lexus repossessed.