Hospital Part I: getting sick and getting admitted

We've been home from the hospital almost a week now; which really is hard to believe since our time in the hospital felt more like three weeks! But as I said in the previous post, here is part one of Boushka's story.

My little Boushka has had an interesting time (to say the least) ever since we all caught our little stomach virus back in December. Our family of 6 always gets a stomach bug in December-- I swear, it never fails! 5 of us were sick for hours or just a day with typical belly symptoms. Unfortunately for Boushka, the virus (or what we were sure was a virus at the time) hung around an entire 7 days. It seemed that she woke up a renewed little girl on day 8.

Since everyone seemed better, we went on with our holiday celebrations as usual. But the poor little gal kept having 4-6 really heavy, really smelly diapers a day--and I'm not talkin' about urine, folks!

Finally, after this condition continued longer than two weeks, I took her into our doctor. After a good scan of my baby, the doctor ordered a stool sample. SIDE BAR: If you're friends with me on FB, this was when I let the world know that collecting samples for such a test was quite the adventure with a sensitive gag reflex (thank you pregnancy).

So I collected and promptly delivered the samples--five tubes worth. We waited and waited, and a week later we learned that all they could find was some yeast overgrowth. No rotavirus, bacteria or little parasites hanging around. At the time I honestly didn't even think to ask questions. I didn't realize that yeast in the gut was abnormal; I was just happy to have an answer and an available treatment---this was in the form of diflucan. At this point all I really wanted was an answer to what she had and how we could make her better.

We started her first treatment of diflucan two weeks ago-- January 18th. She received her dose pretty late in the day. Wednesday she woke up and seemed off to me; but not having the advantage of hindsight at that point, I just figured this was some kind of typical toddler behavior.

She was clingy and more needy that day. So much so, that I never got her the medicine. So we woke up on Thursday and I got her meds to her right away. Shortly thereafter, my girl got sick to her stomach. At this point I just assume we're in for another round of the stomach bug.

I watched her and held on to her the rest of Thursday and she continued to get sick. When she woke up Friday she was groggy and lethargic. I held on to her all day offering cuddles and fluids. We ended up giving her another dose of diflucan on Friday evening, and she again started throwing up after not having been sick to her stomach all day. Matt took her to bed with him around 10 or 11 that night and I stayed up to conduct some research.

The most obvious thing to me was that she became sick shortly after taking the meds. Naturally, I looked up the medicine and it listed several side effects. In a section that discussed severe reactions they listed vomiting.

So I call our doctor's office, and of course the one doctor I consider a giant, incompetent excuse for a doctor is the one on call Friday night. We make a call to him and just like I suspected, he ignores anything we have to say and says to bring her in in the morning. No, really Mr. know-it-all---you think I can just wait until morning huh? We won't go into how badly I want to rub in his face what the condition of my poor baby was when he just spouted off whatever he thought sounded appropriate at the time.

I digress...

Not having any faith in that doctor, I call a local pharmacy since I think the medicine is a likely suspect. The pharmacist listens and tells me to take her to the ER. So I hang up and start crying like any normal pregnant mom... HA! I try discussing things with my husband and we get nowhere because neither of us knows what to do, so I call mama.

She was able to give me a number for nurses who could talk me through things--and thank goodness. After a 30 minute discussion with one of the nurses, I felt better armed with information to determine what I needed to do. I decided to go ahead and let her sleep until about 2 am when I went upstairs to bed.

When I came into the room, she woke up and asked for a drink. I gave her a teaspoon, and within 10 seconds we saw that water again. So I checked her diaper and it was totally dry. She'd only wet twice that day and the last one was 9 hours ago. And because I had promised myself that I would take her to the ER if she was dry at 2 am, off we went. I packed a few diapers and wipes, a drink for Boushka and a few crackers. I had no idea how long we'd have to wait since it was bar-closing time on a Friday night...

Luckily, once I checked her in our wait only lasted a matter of minutes before they called us back to take basic vitals and such. And even once we got an ER room, we were seen by a nurse rather quickly. She did some tests like a cap refill and checked her spit and diaper for moisture. Her cap refill was right at 3 seconds, which is when it's time to take some action. And of course her diaper was still dry.

Without waiting for doc's approval (he trusts the nurses to make calls like this when he's busy according to our nurse), our nurse started an IV and fluids. And thank God she made that call. I even told her how grateful I was that she listened to her gut to get those fluids started.

The next hour was the worst of our entire stay. She was so dehydrated that her veins were not cooperating. She was stuck several times all while I had to help hold her down--I HATED that. And if I sat here and really recalled that hour, I would start crying all over again (yes, I had tears streaming down my face just watching her in that pain)! They also needed to start a catheter on her, but apparently her anatomy is so small they couldn't advance the cath. So again, she was poked several times in that area to no avail.

Finally, an IV was started and they gave up on the cath--instead we got a pee bag. And we waited and waited for it to fill. It wasn't until we were admitted shortly after 7:30 that my girl had any urine output. She went 15 hours without so much as a dribble--and we only got the dribble after she was pumped full of fluids from 3 bags in the ER. Again, thank you nurse for being attentive and doing what you thought was best!

While still in the ER the doc did a belly Xray and blood work. Xray came back clean but the blood work showed just how dehydrated she was. In the doc's words "I'm glad you brought her in because she is really dehydrated." And with that we were sent upstairs to the PEDS floor.

It took us about an hour to get settled into our room, and then my mom and my in-laws came to visit. We're so lucky to have such loving grandparents who come through for us in any and all circumstances. We would not have survived very well those days without their support.

My in-laws were able to go to our house that morning to take care of our other three kiddos, and Matt was then able to come join me at the hospital. And my mom stayed with us there in the hospital.

And that brings us up to getting admitted. I'll post the second part of the story soon as it'll deal with her actual stay. There were even some good moments while there in the hospital as you'll soon see with some pictures.