Monday, April 11, 2011

Urgent care is for wimps... the emergency room is where it's at!

Fun evening on Friday. Me and Katie and a friend and her two kids went shopping at a GREAT sale (seriously good deals) then to DSW, then to a pizza place for dinner, THEN to Walmart. 

I bought the pants I mentioned in my post from a few days ago (at $10, not the $2 I hoped to spend... but I think they're worth it...) and Katie got $5 to spend on whatever.

She bought a ballerina princess barbie.  Of course.

It seems like in the past year she's gathered a collection of barbie/princess dolls. We even had our first guy barbie join the group on Thursday (a birthday gift from Grandma and Grandpa) and Katie loves him. You might have heard of him... his name is Ken. He's in that new Toy Story movie?

Katie is pretty generous with her dolls... Jake introduced Ken to Woody, Sponge Bob, and Buzz and now they're buds. It's so good for Ken to get out with the guys sometimes... He's seriously outnumbered by the princesses. Those girls won't leave him alone!


So we finally head home at about 10 pm and it was time. We used Grandpa's truck for our transportation and I think it brought back memories of all of the times she's gone somewhere with Grandpa... which made her miss grandpa (TEARS on her face and her sad voice telling me "Mommy, I miss Grandpa soooo much.") and we were both tired.

We finally get home. I headed to the bathroom, and on my way I heard Jake cough in his room. A cough that sounded like a seal bark. Really bad.

John picked him up and he just didn't seem like his usual self (I know... middle of the night, of course he'll be tired, but it seemed different) and he was breathing funny but hadn't been sick or anything.


Katie was her usual helpful self by mentioning that Jake "might have" swallowed a tiny toy. She never said he actually swallowed this toy but she said that he had a tiny little ball or something and now she doesn't know where it is. Helpful, right? Just enough info to freak us out. Thanks sweetie.

Soooo, off I go to the ER at 10:30 at night.

Jake was tired and his nose was really snotty. Pretty gross... all of that snot. John does better with body fluids than I do but I do better with emergency care. I guess it's a given that I take one for the team this time.


(As a side note, John has been puked on WAY more than I have in our parenting career so we're probably still not even... although Jake DID pee on me during my c-section... right as he was being pulled out of my stomach which is pretty gross. Maybe we are even after all.)
Waited about 20 minutes to be called into the first room with the triage nurse. Oxygen levels were fine. Huge sigh of relief. A bit of a fever, lots of snot, and lots of nurse charming later and we were back in the waiting room. For about 45 minutes.

Not too bad so far. Hospital waiting rooms can be interesting.

Got called back to an exam room with a bed so we snuggled in and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Doc came. Gave Jake a quick once over but he didn't find anything scary. He ordered an x-ray and left to see other patients. 


Oh, a random guy pushing a computer walked into our room just before the doctor came in.  He typed away but didn't say anything to me.  Looks like it's this guys job to wheel his computer around with the doc, taking notes. He didn't look around, didn't say hello, didn't acknowlege us at all.  It was pretty funny.  Not very funny now that I'm typing this out, but at the time it gave me a chuckle.

Waited for the x-ray guy.

Waited.

Waited.

Dozed off snuggling with Jake till a
 nurse stopped by to ask if he wanted to color. He said yes in his cute voice. She brought in a table and colors and a book for him.

I dozed off again with him sitting in front of me, coloring away.

About an hour and a half later, doc comes to see if we've been to x-ray. I opened my eyes to a squint and told him that we hadn't. The tech came about 20 minutes later. Asked if I could be pregnant so he could ask a nurse to hold Jake during the x-ray.


Pregnant?  Ummm, yes.

Found a nurse. Did the x-ray. Jake charmed again. So cooperative and so sweet and he wasn't even afraid when I had to step away into the x-ray booth. He got 3 stickers.

Then back to the room and the same nurse asked if Jake wanted a popsicle... he said yes. And smiled at her.  Again, the little charmer.

We finally got the verdict. Nothing on x-ray (thanks again, Katie) and it looked like a virus. A contagious virus. He mentioned what to do in case of croup but the verdict was virus.

We finally got home at around 3:30 a.m. Yes, in. the. morning.

John held Jake and I went to bed.

And we decided to postpone Katie's birthday party when she ended up with a sniffly nose the next day. She wad surprisingly okay with it... once she made sure she would still get the princess cake she picked out when we did reschedule her party.


Oh, Grandpa? You might notice a blue, rectangle shaped sticker on the window of your suburban. Katie may have accidentally (or on purpose) stuck that there after our stop at the big sale. She was very upset when I mentioned that it was not a good idea to stick sticky stickers onto car windows... especially when the car window is not ours. She got very emotional when she thought that you might be mad at her. Funny, she didn't care so much about how mommy would feel when she stuck a sticker on the window of our car...