It was a really interesting weekend. We had a wedding in Rochester, NY. Since that is a six and a half hour drive from here, we decided to leave B with my parents, since that's a really long car ride, even for a really good baby. We dropped him off on Friday morning and set out. We arrived in Rochester in the early evening, and went out for a nice, outdoor dinner. We had wings (of course) and beer (of course) on a deck, and enjoyed some grown up time. We laughed at ourselves because we missed B so much that we were looking at pictures of him on E's iPhone by the end of dinner. It was a great, fun night, though. We hadn't had a night like that in a long time.
Saturday was the wedding. We did our wedding ritual of going out to breakfast before getting ready. We got ready, met up with some friends and headed to the church. The reception was outdoors in a wedding tent, by a lake. It was really pretty, and the weather was absolutely perfect. We had such a blast at the wedding. We had a good bit to drink, since we figured this was our chance! I think we poured ourselves into bed at around 1:30 or so.
At 3:45, E's phone rang. I was still half asleep, so figured it was one of his drunken friends calling. But then I realized that he was really rather serious. I heard him say something about a fax, and all I could think was, "WHY would someone from work be calling him at 4 am on a Sunday?!" E put the phone down, and by the look on his face, I knew it was my Mom calling. I frantically asked him what was wrong. He was trying to calm me down before telling me - NOT an effective way of calming me down. Finally, he told me that B was having some trouble breathing again, and that my Mom was calling because she was thinking of taking him to the hospital, and wanted to call us beforehand. The faxing they were talking about was in case they needed a consent form to get B treatment. I got on the phone and my Mom explained that he was okay, and not as bad as he was last time, but that she didn't want to risk it getting that bad, so she was planing to take him in as a precaution. She said that my sister was on the way to her house, and that she would call me back when they had the fax number (my brother in law's) for me to fax a permission.
I hung up the phone and basically went on auto-pilot, packing up the room. E went down and checked out, and then packed most of our stuff in the car. At around 4:30, I hadn't heard back from my Mom, so I called back. She told me that they'd spoken to B's doctor, who agreed with the decision to bring him in and told them that they didn't need the fax - that a phone permission would be fine. They'd gotten B in the car and that he was smiling and flirting with my sister, which they thought was a good sign (he has a major thing for his Auntie K). I told them that we were getting in the car and would be there as soon as possible.
I called back from the road and spoke to a woman at the hospital, who took my insurance information. After that, the ride is kind of a blur of moments of snoozing, moments of road whizzing by, and moments of wondering WHY we'd gone somewhere six and a half hours away from B.
We got to the hospital around 11:15 Sunday morning. B was in an exam room in the ER, resting on his Papa's lap, smiling and laughing. He was definitely "tugging" (the term for the movement of the abdomenal muscles when someone is in asthmatic distress) but seemed in good spirits. They moved him to a private room around noon, and were doing nebulizer treatments every two hours. This time, he was still able to do bottles, so he didn't need an IV or oxygen, which was reassuring. The treatments continued through the night. I stayed with B at the hospital and sent E to my parents' house to get some sleep, since he hadn't been able to nap in the car.
By yestereday morning, he'd improved. The doctor said that if we could keep the nebulizer treatments at every four hours, he could go home at 4:00, which we did. We are still doing nebs every four hours, so I'm still completely exhausted, but at least our little adventure is coming to a close.
For anyone who's wondering, the 4 am phone call about your child really does suck as much as you imagine, and every horrible scenario really does flash through your head.
No comments:
Post a Comment