“The Feeling that it’s all a lot of Oysters, but no Pearls”

I’m told there are about 8 inches of snow on the ground in Durham right now. The view from my window suggests it may be true. I can’t verify it, because I’m squeezed into a hospital bed with Rowan.

Friday night, I got brave (or stupid) and decided to take the kids to Target to get some odds and ends (and bread and milk, because snow). When I got to daycare Rowan was coughing a lot. I happened to have an inhaler and spacer with me, so I gave him a couple of puffs and off we went to what was sure to be the worst possible time to go to Target like ever.

It turned out to be surprisingly laid back in there, I guess everyone was waiting to raid the place on a weekend? So we wandered around, going through Lorelei’s list of friends she wanted to buy a small present for.

By the time we got to the toy section, Rowan was coughing a lot, and I was eyeing his chest for retractions. He wasn’t interested in the toys and just wanted to lay his head against me — which does make steering a cart fairly difficult.

We grabbed a pack of pull-ups and ditched the rest of our list to get Rowan home, where I dug out the nebulizer equipment. At bed time he had a fever of almost 103, and refused oral meds, telling me he wanted “to be hot,” so suppository it was. I let him sleep in my bed that night, and every three hours his breathing/coughing would wake me up and I’d do another neb.

Saturday morning I took him into the ped’s urgent weekend hours. The doctor thought she heard signs of pneumonia, so we did another breathing treatment, then she sent us home with a prescription for abx and steroids — with instructions to start the steroids if he wasn’t feeling better in 24 hours. They did a flu swab, which was negative, but it irritated his nose and he wouldn’t keep his finger out of there.

By the afternoon he still needed treatments every three hours, his resp rate was anywhere from 40-70 breaths per minute, and he was retracting again. I’ll add this video to my page of retraction examples soon.

I was getting increasingly nervous about keeping him home overnight, knowing that there was a strong possibility that we would be snowed in by morning. I called the on-call doctor, who said to take him to the ED, which is what I figured.

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls – Counting Crows

After we got signed in at the ED and sat down in the waiting room, Rowan’s nose started bleeding and he proceeded to wipe blood all over his face. They get a ped patient in potential respiratory distress back quickly anyhow, but I’m sure his “I eat the faces of my enemies” look helped.

They got him hooked up to the monitors and I went through the entire story the requisite 23950282544 times to all the people. They decided to monitor him, get a chest xray, start steroids, and do two breathing treatments and then assess. He was so compliant about everything — and not in a good way, he was just too puny to put up any fight.

The chest x-ray came back clear, much to everyone’s surprise. His temp kept rising and by the time I went out to ask someone to come check it, it had gotten to 104. They brought some ibuprofen which was difficult as always, with the added bonus that he kept gagging and we were scared he would puke on us. Then suddenly he decided he was super thirsty and wanted to gulp water. He was literally fighting the nurse to get his water bottle back, when she said he needed to slow down before he puked.

Then his o2 sats were dipping down into the low 90s, so they decided to start oxygen. He flat-out refused the nasal cannula, saying “I don’t want to hurt!!!!” so I had to hold the tubing and just go with blow-by oxygen. At first, he really didn’t want it, but after the nurse called it his “special wind” he decided it was awesome. We alternated between giving him his special wind and giving some to his raccoon stuffie and his hospital bracelet.

He isn’t always so easily swayed by cheesy phrases – he calls bullshit on the blood pressure cuff being an “arm hug.”

By this point, I wasn’t at all surprised when they said they wanted to admit him. He’s never needed supplemental oxygen before, not even as a 31-week preemie.

We finally got moved upstairs to the ped floor a little after midnight. Stepping off the 5th-floor elevator feels like my brain skips a beat. The fish tank. The kid art on the windows. If I went right, instead of left, I’d be at the ICN where he spent his first days.

As soon as he got in a comfortable bed he passed out. I was grateful for the private bathroom.

The night went pretty well and everyone let us sleep as much as possible. Since they were doing inhalers now, it was easy to give them in his sleep. He was absolutely drenched in sweat, but at least he was sleeping.

This morning, I opened the blinds to a snow globe world, except in reverse. Rowan and I are the ones trapped inside while the snow swirled outside. I have a limit of approximately 18-24 hours in the hospital before I start to go stir crazy, and I’ve been both glad to not have to go out in the snow, and desperate to just get out of here.

I was starving and amazed that he agreed I could go down to the cafeteria and get some breakfast while he watched Paw Patrol. It felt like some sort of weird bittersweet milestone — I’ve never been able to leave the room in the hospital with him before.

The plan for right now is to keep monitoring him for the day. His o2 sat is still liking to hang around 95-96 and he’s not making it four hours between albuterol. He has perked up considerably, though, which is a mixed blessing. Trying to keep a three-year-old tethered to a monitor by what is basically a band-aid on his finger doesn’t always go over very well. They did agree to unhook him for a while so he could look at the snow, but now he thinks he should be able to do that whenever he wants.

He’s really taking this mostly in stride. My heart broke a bit when he said, “And I’m gonna make a snowball and then we will make a snowman!” I was planning to make snow cream with Lorelei and am sad we won’t get to do that.

The snow has already changed to rain while the roads are still too treacherous to go home even if they let us. The news keeps reporting on the stranded vehicles at the corner of my street. The doctors did promise not to kick us to the curb with no place to go.

This is not my first rodeo, and I already had a bag packed before we even went to the ped yesterday morning. I wore my glasses and packed chargers and clothes. I have enough of my prescription meds to get through tomorrow, but no more Zantac with me. I guess I will be glad that I can raise the head of the bed.

I realize how easily I could have been stuck here without my meds — something that isn’t a problem when I’ve been the patient. Because of the snow, it would be difficult to even send someone by my house. What if I’d had to rush here from Target the other night? I keep one day’s worth in my purse, but after that I’d be screwed.

I’m exhausted and have an underlying anxiety about getting home in the snow/ice.

I’m so over all the memories of Rowan’s birth — it’s weird things like the frame around the mirror, the bed table, inflatable beds, the whiteboard and of course, the soap. One silver lining is that over the last few years I have basically learned how to tune out non-urgent alarms from monitors.

There are some little moments I want to remember: his steadfast refusal to remove his shoes for the duration of this hospital stay, the way he lets out a long noisy exhale when they ask him to take a deep breath, or his adorable and direct answers to questions. I don’t love that I can measure his development against previous hospital stays – he’s so much more vocal and aware – but at least we live in the age of wifi.

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5pm update: Rowan is stir crazy, exhausted, and feeling somewhat better. He’s climbing the bed. The nurse did let him off the monitors for a little while so he could at least run around the room some — he can’t go out of the room because just to come in here the healthcare team have to put on gowns and masks and gloves. So, he’s crazy and stuck in a small room. The nurse was going to try to find him e a truck, but the playroom is closed due to the weather (childlife type people are obviously not considered essential staff). It reminds me of the time I was in the hospital at age 6 and the playroom was right across the hall. I could see into it from my room, but wasn’t allowed to go play. I made “Ms” on my monitors and freaked out the nurses, instead. Bored kids make questionable decisions.  Rowan is currently standing on the bed singing songs at the top of his lungs. Now he is making the bed into a slide.

I think we’ll be able to go home tomorrow, weather depending.

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Update, December 12:

We were discharged Monday, a little after noon.

He finally got to play in the snow!

He had his follow-up appointment this morning, and it seems like everything is moving in the right direction. However, I need someone to remind me that unncessarily taking both kids with me to the ped is more than my brain can handle. Lorelei really wanted to get to see her doctor, and it was hard to argue with that. But I literally snuck half an Ativan while they were climbing furniture.