I spent last night in the emergency room with my very sick, very tired and VERY cranky son.
Ryder was born 6 weeks premature. Because of this his lungs were sliiightly under developed, and because of this, he spent his first couple weeks in the NICU. Ryder was born prematurly because of the ‘fender bender’ that his father got into when i was in the car with him. And although Corey calls it a fender bender, it was a full on frontal collision with a ford escort, going 50 mph. I went into labor right away.
So needless to say, I curse Coreys name every time Ryder gets sick. And thats alot.
Granted, for being premature he is a normal little boy. He does have to have nebulizer breathing treatments at night and he has asthma, and his lungs are still a lil smaller then those of a 3 year old who wasn’t born pre-term, but there was no brain or organ damage. He’s smart as a whip, and his kidneys and liver and heart and all that good stuff work perfectly.
But anyway back to last night.
Ryder has been under the weather for the past 3 days. He’s been coughing, having trouble catching his breath, running a fever and in general, just feeling crummy. Then at about 9pm last night, he started really struggling to breath so we drove 100 mph to get to the hospital and when we walked in- it was PACKED!
Stupid me, i had not even thought about all the hypochondraics taht would be in the ER thinking they had the swine flu. DAMMIT! So we checked in and I explained to the very stern nurse at the desk that my child was having a really hard time breathing and that he needed to be seen immediatly. And do you know what that bitch said to me?? Take a seat ma’am, we have a lot of upper respitory complaints in here tonight, it might take a minute.
UMMM- WHAT?
So here’s where knowing a doctor pays off. I paiged Gabe since he was working anyway, who showed up in the ER in what seemed like 1 minute, and took us to the pediatric unit right away, and the whole way out of the ER i gave that nurse the stink eye. She’ll get hers!
Once we were in a room and Ryder was on oxygen, we waited.
and waited.
and waited.
And FINALLY the pediatric resident came in, looked at Ryder and was ready to DISCHARGE gim.
oh hell no.
I went back into the hallway and ran up to her and asked her to PLEASE look in his throat, listen to his lungs, knock on his back, do ANYTHING lady!
So she sighed, and came back into the room with me, and actually did something medical. She used her stethescope, like a good little doctor, then she took him to x-ray which he screamed about, and when his films came back- she looked at me and said your son has pneumonia. I’ll call in a script, and we’ll discharge him right now.
Wait. wait. wait.
She wanted to discharge us when he was still on oxygen, and struggling to breathe.
We went to the Detroit hospital, which is an hour away. Gabe met us there and the funny thing about doctors is- they know just what to say to be seen right away.
The pediatric specialist at Detroit is a very smart and compassionate man, who saw a woman juggling 3 tired kids, one of which is wheezing and out of breath, and helped us asap.
They ran tests, and took more films and did all that fantastic medical stuff that the other doc failed to be bothered with and after 7 hours of laying in a hospital bed with a 3 year old clingling to you for dear life because not only is he exhausted, but he’s also terrified and irritated, they gave us a diagnosis.
Upper respitory imflammation, fluid in lungs, doulbe ear infection, acute bronchitis and strep. Are you friggin kidding me?
So we were sent home with a mountain of antibiotics and cough syrup and ear drops and nebulizer treatments. Holy moly.
Thank god for health insurance, good doctors, and mcdonalds being open 24/7- cuz we were hungry on the way home!
