Tuesday, April 15, 2008

A New ER

I'm sick. Fever, chills and it feels like somebody stuffed sweatsocks into my various sinuses. It was coming on yesterday when Eric was complaining about stomach pain after school. He put himself down for a nap, which is unheard of these days and he proceeded to cry in his sleep, also a first, so I took him to the doctor.

She pressed on his belly and sent us off to the ER to get checked out for appendicitis. We went to Children's where he is a gastrointerology patient -- it seemed like a good fit for stomach pain. We were there for five hours, and NONE of it, I mean NONE of it was spent in the waiting room. They triaged us right away and found us a room. The nurses took great care of us. His blood work ruled out appendicitis, but it took hours to figure that out. And then he ended up needing the nebulizer because he was asthmatic and wheezing. The only terrible part for him was getting an IV in his hand. I made the choice not to wait for anesthetics for his hand because it would take a half hour and I wanted them to start on his blood work ASAP. It turned out that this was CLEARLY not the way to go. My brave little dude who is usually so good about this kind of stuff cried and cried. They taped off the IV and didn't attach it to anything. It was more of a precautionary thing.

The hospital takes on such a surreal quality after a few hours. Especially in an ER with no natural light and an exam room with a broken wall clock.

He spiked a fever while we were there and they gave him some Tylenol and it came right down. After his third neb, I pleaded "Can we just go home now?" And the attending said, "Sure!" and they got us out of there pretty fast.

Today he is fine... All bounced back as if nothing happened. And I'm totally sick now. Grrr... Argh...

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home