The Worst Kind of Rush

My train derailed at 8:42 yesterday morning.  That was when Charles suddenly started wailing, and I mean wailing, about a tummy ache.

 

I did the normal mom things (have him drink a glass of water, have him try to go poop), but Charles went from zero to doubled over in excruciating pain in about three minutes.  By 8:45, we were headed to the Emergency Room.  Charles couldn’t walk, so I carried him, all 68 pounds of him, from the couch to the car and the car to the ER, his shoes in my purse.  He screamed like I did when I gave birth.  His hair was sweaty.  He writhed in pain.

 

 

I thought, for sure, that we were headed for surgery.  Appendicitis?  Bowel obstruction?  Testicular torsion?  The doctors didn’t know either.  After pain and anti-nausea medications were administered via IV, he began the rounds of testing: blood, urine, x-ray, ultrasound, and finally, a CT scan.

 

I spent six hours alternately praying that he would be okay, holding back tears as I watched him struggle against the pain, and reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader when he was awake (I was hoarse after a couple of hours).

 

 

At 2:45, we got the results of all the testing: mesenteric adenitis, an inflammation of the intestinal lymph nodes most likely related to constipation.  We were instructed to treat the constipation aggressively and the adenitis with pain medication.

 

The doctor looked at me, somewhat worse for the wear after six hours of adrenaline and anxiety, and stated the obvious because I clearly hadn’t internalized the results yet: “This is a good thing: no surgery.”

 

The relief was profound.  I left the hospital in a daze.  Charles was able to walk out.  He hadn’t eaten all day and he said he was hungry.  I administered my first ever (and his first ever) suppository and I was still so shell-shocked from the day and the fact that I wasn’t wringing my hands while my baby underwent surgery that I didn’t even bat an eye.

 

He’s mostly fine now.  I, however, have an adrenaline hangover. 

 

That’s a real thing, you know, an adrenaline hangover.  I treated it with a giant glass of wine and an early bedtime.  Tony treated it by tending to Freddie in the middle of the night so I could sleep.

 

Today, I’m simply grateful.  Grateful for the first-class hospital and the first-rate doctors and nurses and other medical staff.  Grateful to God that my child doesn’t have to have surgery.  Grateful for the continued health of my family. 

 

No surgery.  Those are beautiful words. 

What Happened

What happened?  Where did I go?

 

      

Please excuse my absence, I’ve been a bit busy.

 

 

His name is Freddie.  Frederick Roger Cook.  And he’s perfect.

 

 

Eight pounds, eleven ounces, twenty-one inches long, Freddie entered the world at 9:30 am on Monday, July 7.  7/7/14.

 

  

I awoke to a contraction at about 5:50 am.  I had been having contractions off and on for several days, but this one hurt just a little bit.  Like my pelvis was ever so slightly trying to separate from itself.  I stayed in bed and had a few more over the next thirty minutes, so I got up, told Tony, “I think we’re going to have a baby today,” and got in the shower.  We called my brother to come take care of the kids, got the kids out of bed and started on their breakfast, and then went to the hospital.

 

 

 

They got me into triage and checked my progress at about 7:45 am.  I was four centimeters dilated.  At 8:45, when the doctor got there and checked me, I was only about six centimeters dilated.  Contractions were starting to really hurt, but I breathed through them. 

 

I should have known that we were getting close when I started to feel dizzy in between contractions.  I would sit down, but then the contractions got so close together that I would have to stand back up almost immediately.  I moaned and focus through the contractions, clawing my fingers into Tony’s shoulders, my head pushing into his chest.

 

 

Tony said something like, “That was the third contraction like that, I’m calling the nurse!” because, of course, everyone had left the room just before things got interesting.  By the time the nurse came back, I was moaning, “I have to push!”  She rushed to get the doctor and another nurse.

 

 

The team broke the bed down and I scarcely got on it when my water broke and I began pushing.  I also began screaming and shouting and probably cursing.  Having a baby HURTS.

 

 

It felt like forever, but I only pushed for five minutes to birth my baby boy.

 

 

He was immediately placed on my belly and then he immediately showed his relief at being born by pooping all over me.  The nurses wiped us both off and then, not two minutes later, he did it again.  Stinker.

 

 

He’s wonderful.  He looks like his brothers, who love him desperately and shower him with (probably too much) affection.  He smells amazing.  As tired as I am, I am loving every minute of this.  My Freddie.

All’s Well That Ends with Surgery

After I had Jamie, I got a hemorrhoid.  First one in my life, and hopefully the last.  Thank the good Lord, it vanished quickly, and was clearly a consequence of pushing Jamie’s giant head out of my you-know-where.  But some people, like my dear husband, are prone to hemorrhoids and there’s just nothing they can do to avoid them… and as in Tony’s case, nothing they can do, short of surgery, to correct them.

 

We’ve had a rough week.  I’ve been sick and Tony has been suffering.  Several doctor’s visits over the course of the week concluded with a hemorrhoidectomy Friday evening.  Tony was under general anesthesia for nearly two hours and the surgeon had to remove part of a vein.  How scary and awful does that sound?  He’s still recovering, of course, but I can tell you that the pain I see writ across his face is much different than the pain he wore last week.  It’s healing pain, now.

 

He told me I didn’t have to wait at the hospital for him, which is good, because you know what three things don’t mix?  My two children and a hospital waiting room.  I took them to McDonald’s to burn energy and because I really didn’t feel like cooking.  Charles took his socks off in the PlayPlace and got a sliver in his foot (learning his lesson about socks and their protective properties, I hope) and Jamie rolled in fry dust and McNugget dipping sauce until he was head-to-toe filthy.  This is how I keep my children healthy: make them bathe in the sea of germs that is a fast food play area. 

 

I got a call from the nurse at 6:40 pm that I needed to come to the hospital right away so I could pick up Tony’s prescription for pain medication before the pharmacy closed.  There was probably no way I could have made it in time, but I tried.  I shouted at the boys, who were in the top of the hamster maze, to come down and get dressed, we have to go pick up daddy at the hospital, he’s out of surgery!  Nothing like yelling that in a crowded restaurant to earn you some strange looks.  The boys dawdled, we got to the pharmacy too late, and then we proceeded to wreak havoc upon the hospital waiting room.  When Tony was finally moved to recovery, the boys raced back through the halls of the day-surgery floor, careening into garbage cans and wheelchairs.  Fortunately, at 7:15 pm, there weren’t a whole lot of people there.  When it became clear that Tony was not going to jump out of the hospital bed and get dressed to go home, I called my brother to pick up the kids.  I couldn’t risk them destroying expensive I.V. equipment or something, and things were definitely headed down that path.

 

We spent a pretty easy weekend.  Friends of mine absconded with Charles and Jamie for most of the day Saturday to give us a break, so we slept a lot.  Yesterday, I felt recovered enough to run the Jingle Bell 5k through Mount Vernon and then we watched the Christmas parade and had dinner.  Now, if we could all get well and stay well, the holiday season might feel a bit more like a holiday.  And Tony, well, this was his second surgery since we’ve been married.  I’d sure like it to be the last.

Not Congestive Heart Failure, Thank God

So that was a little adventure, one that included a strong attempt by my entire family to keep the medical industry afloat.

 

By our 2 pm appointment at the doctor’s office on Tuesday, Charles was looking pretty blue and retracting like crazy.  I always expect to go into the doctor with a sick kid and be told “it’s nothing.”  I prefer it that way, in fact.  I prefer to be wrong about how sick my kiddos are.  I would much rather feel embarrassed about wasting the doctor’s time and the $30 copay than be affirmed in my own diagnosis of “Oh, Shit, He’s Really Sick.” 

 

I wasn’t so lucky on Tuesday.  Charles and I were sent straight to the ER.  Our doc called ahead and spoke with the doctor on duty and we moved through as quickly as we reasonably could – it is an ER, after all, and therefore much slower than desired.  Charles was listless, but enjoying The Lion King on the ipod, so he didn’t freak out too much until Respiratory Therapy came to give him an Albuterol treatment.  Oh, he did not like that mist blowing in his face.  And THEN, IV therapy came in to hook him up to fluids.  They had to immobilize his arm and that meant that I had to immobilize the rest of him, all while he was screaming and thrashing, “I don’t want to breathe anymore!  I don’t want to breathe anymore!”  He was finally so overwhelmed that he fell asleep, which was good because I just had to prop him up for the chest x-ray, rather than fighting him.

 

As it turned out, his lungs were fine.  Are fine.  Perfect, even.  The docs had thought he might have had pneumonia, but no.  It was just a virus gone bad, a perfect storm of circumstances that allowed him to lose most of his lung function.  We left the ER at 9 pm, Charles all hyper from the Albuterol. 

 

And then I crashed.  You see, not only did they tell me that they were considering congestive heart failure as a possible cause for all this drama (oh, shit, that’s when I felt like I came close to losing my baby), but my mom entered the hospital at the same time we did.  She had been feeling poorly for days, and they had travelled up to stay overnight before my dad’s biopsy on Wednesday.  She was white as a sheet and nearly doubled over in pain.  The diagnosis: perforated diverticulitis.  She has been in the hospital since Tuesday, and they’re still waiting to see if she gets better or needs surgery.  And yeah, my dad had a biopsy yesterday, well, 31 of them, actually, to continue his battle against prostate cancer. 

 

I’m overwhelmed.  I fell into bed Tuesday night like a rock.  I still need sleep.  And now I am sick with the same cold my little guys have.  But mine came with a side of guilt.  Tony has sacrificed work to take Jamie to school the past few days.  “It’s fine this week, but…” he said.  Which means I can’t make a habit of this.  As if I wanted to.  Charles is still home with me and feisty, but not well enough to go to preschool, which he tells me at every chance he hates.  We have employees out at the office.  And there’s no one to take care of me.  I still have to take care of everyone else and try to recover, too. 

 

Top that off with the fact that I have spent lots of time this week with Charles and virtually none, outside of late-night nursing sessions, with Jamie.  Charles is just so demanding and Jamie is just not.  I feel horrible about that.  I love Jamie and I wish I could create a better bond with him.  But circumstances this week have kept my attention trained on Charles almost exclusively.  I’m afraid Jamie will think I don’t love him or that I love Charles more than him.

 

What a vicious life, motherhood.

When Organs Attack!

Tony is sleeping the sleep of the heavily medicated right now. He is a bit lighter than he was yesterday, but I don't recommend his weight-loss plan. You know, that plan where they remove organs.

Tony had been feeling ill for a couple of days, but yesterday he complained to me that he felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach. He swore it wasn't his appendix (this is where the universe laughed heartily) because the pain wasn't localized to the right lower abdomen. I sent him to bed with some Gatorade and orders to rest and drink. He rested, but he didn't drink. By 6 pm, he was vomiting with force (or with feeeeeling, if you will). By 8 pm, he said it felt like he had been repeatedly kicked in the gut (who was beating him in his sleep? Who?). Charles went down to bed, I called Leland, and we headed to the ER. They put an IV in because he was severely dehydrated, and sent blood off for labs around 10:45 pm. For those keeping track at home, that's my BED TIME. The doctor scared me half to death when he insisted to me that it wasn't appendicitis (cue universe laughing, again) and that I was, instead, facing a rampant, vicious virus that was sure to bring our whole family down, just you wait mere mortal.

By 11 pm, even with some powerful anti-nausea medication in his IV (on top of almost a liter and half of fluid, at this point), Tony was horking again, and writhing with pain. This time, someone had kicked him in his lower back when I wasn't looking. What are these, evil gnomes attacking when my back is turned?! The bastards! Labs hadn't come back by midnight (busy night in the ER), so I asked the nurse for a ballpark time of when we would be sent home. She couldn't reasonably give me one, so I left my husband to sleep (at this point, he had some pain killers and a bigger dose of anti-nausea medication) with the promise that I would wake the baby and we would come get him as soon as he was discharged.

Charles woke at 5 am to feed, and still no word from Tony. Finally, he called at about 6:45. The official diagnosis, after an MRI and some painful (so I hear) belly-probing? That's right, appendicitis.

He had laproscopic surgery at about 11 am today, and is now on the road to recovery. When he finally woke from the anaesthesia (he's a lightweight), he told me he felt like a million bucks. I guess any thing's better than an inflated appendix. He'll be going home tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll be child-wrangling solo, so don't expect much in terms of updates. Instead, give us a call tomorrow, anytime. He'll probably be bored before too long :-)