Thursday, May 13, 2010

A Perfect Storm



It has taken me about all day to recover from last night's events. I'll start at the beginning.

I get a call about 5 p.m. that Claire feels hot, threw up her formula and the kicker... slept for 4 hours straight. Claire!? Ok, there must be something seriously wrong with her.

So, I jump in the car and race home. Temp is 100.2 and she is very obviously not feeling well. But she took a few more ounces of formula and crashed.

Fast forward three hours. Her temp is now 101.3, she's throwing up, and it's hailing. Did I mention this was all taking place during a thunderstorm? So, not only is Claire crying because she doesn't feel well, Grace is crying because she's Grace, the dogs are running around inside because of the storms, the cats are rattling the door because they feel left out, and I'm sitting in the closet rocking back and forth because this is all just too much to handle.

So, we call the on-call nurse at our pediatrician's office. She says because of her age, we need to take her to the ER.

We ask Scott's parents to come and sit with Grace while we trek to the torture chamber ... I mean hospital.

We spend the next four hours wincing, crying, holding her hand as she screams and screams and SCREEEEAAAAMS. No one could blame her. She had an IV in her head, a catheter to get a urine sample, X-rays taken of her stomach and chest and snot sucked out of her nose. On top of feeling sick in the first place.





Surely they have done every test possible. Surely we will know something. Surely we didn't just put her through all of that to walk out of the hospital empty-handed. Surely.

All results are normal. Probably a viral infection. Call your doctor in the morning.

You've got to be kidding. Our baby just went through hell. As the anger and guilt start to build inside me, I look down at our baby girl who hasn't had a proper meal in 14 hours, been tortured with needles and tubes and spent her evening screaming, and she looks back at me. And smiles.

If she can remain calm after all of that, surely so can I.

4 comments:

Haley said...

That second picture looks like a contraption from 1874. It even scares me, and I have 26 years on her! Hope she's feeling better...poor thing. :(

Anonymous said...

Katie, that contraption scares the heck out of me. and you look so calm. i think i would have been crying right along with claire.

Cory

Anonymous said...

Poor munchkin moo!!! I hope you recovered from you trip to the motherland( the hospital),but most of all hope that Claire is feeling much better or begins to. Love ya. ;) -Shawne

H.E.A. said...

Oh my gosh!!! I would not have survived. You are much stronger than I am!! I hope she gets to feeling better!