Hospital and Aftermath

At 2 AM on 4/7, I started fretting about Mali. She had developed a 102.4 fever, she was breathing 70+ breaths per minute, she'd been eating so infrequently that my sheets were soaked with breast milk, and she was starting to breathe with retractions (we could see the outlines of her ribs and ribcage with each breath). I called the pediatrician, and his on-call nurse said to give her some tylenol and see if that helped anything, and to call back when the office opened.

Apparently a transcript of this call was sent to Dr. G's office, because they called us before we could call them, and told us to get that baby right to the ER.

Off we went. Her condition was more acute this time, because instead of slapping us in a room and having doctors/nurses wander by every 90 minutes or so, Mali received constant attention and treatments. They decided to re-admit her within moments, and had a nurse go with her in the ambulance from the Stanffford ER to King's Road hospital. (Tuesday's EMT's took Mali by themselves.)

Our hospital stay began much like the last one: breathing treatments, ty1eno1, more breathing treatments. Except she didn't improve. They put her on oxygen, which kept her O2 levels up, but didn't do much else.

Twenty-four hours after we'd been admitted, they started to worry. Her fever wasn't going away, and her breathing was becoming increasingly rapid and shallow. She was sleeping all the time. One of the nurses jumped all over the doctor, and told her to do something. They took another look at the second ER chest X-Ray, and determined that Mali had pneumonia.

I never said a word about not wanting the antibiotics as in my opinion you just don't fuck with pneumonia. The nurse who did the jumping said that if Mali had kept breathing at that rate and lack of depth, she could have collapsed a lung.

They put in an IV for fluids and antibiotics, and hooked her up to respiratory and pulse sensors. At this point she had eight lines coming off of her body and I started calling her "My Little Server." I asked the nurse how I was supposed to pick her up to feed her, and the nurse told me that she would prefer I just let her rest, and if she didn't get better in time for a feeding, that I could pump and they'd put in a NG tube to deliver the milk.

That was a horrible, tearful night. I didn't tell Seymour about it until after we got home. Thankfully she did get better by morning. Two days' worth of pacing later, they kicked us out.

I arrived home completely frazzled from stress and lack of sleep and having no place to relax for a week (the room was private, thankfully, but had no comfortable place to sit and nurse, or even sit and cuddle).

Within hours of my arriving at home, Seymour developed the ear infection described below and had to go off to the doctor. Thankfully Badger came over to help put the kids to bed, or I don't know what I would have done. I had devolved into a screaming shrieking harpy before her arrival, berating poor Iz for not having started on a report that was due in three days, and worrying about Therapist C who was (and is) still out with the flu and so missed that afternoon's session.

A largely sleepless night followed, owing to Mali's icky breathing and needing to do wee hours A1butero1 doses.

In the morning, I took her in to see Dr. G for a recheck. He has let us slide on her vaccinations so far, but he just about hit the roof when I told him that a child in the hospital ward where she was staying had pertussis (whooping cough).

He ambushed me, in his kind firm way. He told me that he checked out the MYND Institute's policy on vaccinations, and they don't have any problem with it, so he sees no reason to change his policies. He is willing to put off Hep B until she enters school, but as far as the others go, it is submit or change doctors. He is willing to do the shots individually (1 every 2 weeks, etc.), but that's the limit of his patience.

I still have hopes of appealing to his scientific side, by showing him papers that other, reputable doctors have published. At this point he's only heard what I had to say, not read the bases behind it. I wish Dr. Cave's book wasn't titled so obnoxiously, as it is embarrassing to ask someone to heed a book whose title questions their motives.

Seymour is open to going the traditional route with the one dose at a time scheduling, whereas I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about injecting her with all of those substances--especially since she's already been on so many medications and antibiotics this past week (you should see her diaper rash, poor teeny bit).

Dr. S, the non-vaccinating homeopath, is not going to work for us, as she's not on our HMO, and our kids keep getting too expensively ill for us to switch to the PPO plan that would cover her. I suspect we will have to switch doctors, after all (mb, don't you dare snicker!).

Sigh. I am wrecked but so grateful to Jo, who took Iz on Tuesday even though she's in the middle of moving frenzy; Badger, who enabled me to not pass out from stress on Monday even though she's in the middle of writing her thesis; Ep, who is taking Iz this afternoon; and JP who brought us dinner Wednesday. Goddesses, all. It will be months or years before I'm able to repay them properly, but it will happen!

Back to laundry.