Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Screaming in an empty forest through a megaphone

Ok so I came up with this title a couple days ago and at the time I was alone here, so please no disrespect meant to you P as I know you are hearing my rants. It is funny though that I have chosen to write here again knowing that really no one is checking here. I guess the reality of my situation is that I really need to vent and just get everything out being heard isn't nearly as important. It has been a bad couple of days around here, and considering our new baseline for bad days you can guess they have been really bad. We don't seem to be getting anywhere with Elijah's fever and hospital life is frustrate g at best. We have had a string of not very good nurses and problems escalating. Yesterday after a day of the nurses not listening to me say there was a problem with his picc line Elijah rolled over and his entire picc line came out and dropped on the floor. Let the drama really begin, because he didn't have a picc line they needed to start an iv, the nurse couldn't do it in his left arm so instead they put it in his right hand and then splitted his whole hand. Yes take a three year old and completely immobilize their dominate hand and see how that goes. All night long Elijah moaned and whimpered and curled into the fetal position. By 5 am the iv was beeping every 2 minutes that it was occluded. They try to change the dressing to see if that will help. Two minutes later it is beeping again. By now the good day nurse is on as well as our resident. They discuss it and finally decide to pull the iv and give Elijah a little drug break. But they will have to put the iv back in an hour for his next antibiotics, and they will have to draw labs separately for the level of antibiotics in his blood. Just in the nick of time the residents and our oncologist do rounds. The Oncologist decides to keep Elijah off of everything. In the short time Elijah has been cord free he has been happy, he has started eating. He has improved so greatly it makes you wonder why we are here in the first place. All the drugs and intervention aren't helping him any. Perhaps just leaving him alone to heal on his own from this infection is the best course.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Praying that the infection clears soon!

mama biscuit said...

OMG, that sounds sooooo frustrating. I remember how completely miserable I was in the hospital and I was only there for 3 days. Big hugs to you, Karin.

Disneysue said...

Im glad you have a place to get a lot out. You always read that "you are your strongest medical advocate" well, when it's a Mom trying to tell nurses, they seem to think you don't know what you're talking about. Hopefully, the nurses will bring their ears before they have to experience Angry Alfa Mom. Love you!