Our Hospital Week

We had an incredibly eventful week, which is one of the reasons that I haven’t been able to update my blog.

On Monday night I brought Matthew back up to the ER because he wasn’t breathing well. They gave him some treatments, took and x ray and sent him home with no improvements but suggestions to follow up with our family doctor. The next morning I called the doctors office and they told me to take him back to the ER. I explained that they sent me home with instructions to follow up with the doc, but they very forcefully repeated that I needed to take Matthew to the ER. I took him back and his stats we slightly better than the evening before, but since they still weren’t great they admitted him.

The doctor on call was a nice person, but a very aggressive doctor. First he ordered an additional x-ray when only 10 hours had passed since his last x-ray. He wanted to test for whooping cough (even though he admitted that his symptoms were not at all pertussis like), RSV (he has been tested several times and always negative, treatment would be the same either way), a congenital abnormality with a barium swallow, and CF. All this, even though the child already has a diagnosis of asthma. The first test would involve holding the baby down while someone shoved a metal hook up his nose and down his throat. The second involved squirting (a huge amount of) saline solution up his nose then suctioning it back out. I told him no thank you, but I was undecided about the barium swallow. It seemed unlikely to me that he was having anything more than a cold that aggravated his asthma, so I didn’t want to do the barium swallow, but somehow it was scheduled anyway.

Dr. Aggressive thought that it was very important to get the barium swallow done, and thought that Matthew could go home either that afternoon or the next morning.

The radiology techs couldn’t figure out why Matthew was having the test done, nor could the radiologist, so Dr. Aggressive was paged to come reassure me that this was a necessary test. He was once again able to talk me into it. I told him that “I slept in a crib last night, and I am quite sure that if I had normal brain function that I would say no to this test, but I’m not capable of thinking at this point.” And I apologized for making his day hard (poor doctor having to explain things to the emotional and sleep deprived mother!) He then LITERALLY wrapped his hands around my neck, gave a light squeeze and told me “I am going to strangle you!”

The nurse we had that day for whatever reason hated me, and I overheard her several times in person and on the phone talking about how “the mother is in the CRIB with the BABY” and “the mother is extremely anxious to leave, the baby is running all over the hospital.” She was also very reluctant to allow me to eat. The other nurses were so wonderful making me meals from the kitchen and special ordering trays from the cafeteria, but this nurse was unable to call the cafeteria (?) and didn’t know that there was pizza in the freezer, even though she was eating some herself! I told her that the pizza was for the baby, and she drilled me about what happened to his food tray. He hated the turkey and I thought that he would eat some pizza you crazy *&^%^$!

Through all this my regular doctor never once called or came to visit. I am sorely disappointed. Dr. Aggressive thought that we should get a pediatrician instead of a family doctor. I am really torn, and don’t want a pediatrician because I don’t like all the doctor patient games, but Matthew has spend several nights in the ER due to our doctors lack of office hours. Dr. Aggressive said that he asked our doctor to call me, and I fully expected that he would come in to check on Matthew, but he never so much as called. I feel like I should call his office and tell him how disappointed I am, but I also don’t want to deal with the confrontation.

Poor Joshua had to miss Earth Science Day at the Maine State Museum because we were still in the hospital. I felt so bad for him because he had been looking forward to it for a month, and I was pretty excited about going too.

On Saturday we went to the Meet and Greet. There was a little boy (who shared Noah’s birthday!) who was very taken with Matthew and played with him most of the time we were there. He was very sweet with him. Our kids had a great time making crafts, and had several people interested in adopting them!

We are on day 857ish of cold and rain. We are hoping that the sky will empty and leave nothing but beautiful dry air for Halloween. Joshua wants to be a pumpkin, Katherine will be a princess or a queen, and Noah had wanted to be a cowboy but I haven’t found an acceptable costume. His friend has the real deal with boots, hat, lasso, and those leather things that go over their pants, (pantaloons?) so a plastic hat and bandana just don’t seem to be cutting it.

I am wondering if this entry will even fit onto my blog page. Geesh. I should stop writing and go to bed (and check up on everyone else’s blog!). Be grateful I am sparing you my dream from last night!