February 21st

Picture-A-Day:

This is me and my boy on Monday in the ER, where we spent most of the day. If you're my friend on Facebook, you probably know the story. If you're not my FB buddy,  basically what happened is, he woke up Monday morning with a fever. I gave it some time to see if it would go down, but it didn't. I gave him some Tylenol, and it still didn't go down. I called his doctor because he was extremely lethargic, and they said take him to the ER. His temp at the ER was 103.4. I know that's not super high for a child, but it was enough to make him feel pretty crappy. So, he laid on my lap, more or less just like this picture, all day. Whenever my butt would get numb and I'd try to shift, he would wake up and start crying again, then go back to sleep.

If you've ever been to the ER, you know how it goes: You wait... you get called back to triage to find out what's wrong with you. You get sent back to the lobby where you wait some more... you get called back to a room, nurses check your temp and blood pressure and heart rate and all that stuff.  You wait a long time... the doctor comes in to see you. Maybe he orders some tests. You wait some more... nurses come in to take whatever tests or actions the doctor ordered. You wait forever... doctor comes back about 3 hours later to give you the test results, the action plan, and the discharge papers. After 6.5 hours in the ER, you've spent a total of 30-45 minutes in the care of doctors and/or nurses and/or radiology people or whoever it is that is taking care of your medical needs. In our case, it was only to find out that all the tests were negative, he has a virus, and he should go home and get lots of rest. I'm not complaining. I'm thankful for medical science. I'm thankful for doctors and nurses who care for sick people. I'm thankful for an ER. Though sometimes I wish it was like Little House on the Prairie, where the doctor would come to your house so you don't have to take a sick baby out in the cold. Anyway, I realize it's a very busy time, the flu has apparently hit our area pretty hard recently, and the ER is just a very busy place. But... it's still tedious.

Monday night Derrick stayed up all night with the little guy. He was just miserable, drifted in and out of sleep all night. Then Tuesday was no better. He drifted in and out of sleep all day, still had a fever, and I spent most of the day with him on the couch. Thankfully he slept all night last night, and his fever's gone today, although he's still not feeling great. I took him to the doctor and he has an ear infection. But I can tell he's on the upswing. He's bored with laying on the couch, and he wants to get up and play... for about 2 minutes, then he realizes how tired he is, and starts crying until I lay him back down. He's napping in his bed now, and hopefully he'll take a good long nap.