Well I have to admit that things at home had been going really well since Claiborne's last hospital stay, so great that I forgot how quickly things can change. What started out as rainy morning where I thought C was just sleeping in like the rest of us turned into a 3 day hospital stay. I knew she wasn't feeling well when she slept on me for 2 hours that morning, she does not snuggle. She then fell asleep on my dad after playing for maybe 15 minutes. I tried to rationalize and tell myself that it was just a gloomy day...we all just wanted to be curled up in bed! Finally I took her temp and it was up to 100.6, which for her is high, off to the Dr we went.
They sent us to the ER from there and well I knew we wouldn't be going home at that point. She had a couple xrays which didn't show anything but since she was so dehydrated they wanted us to stay so she could get fluids. One of the reasons we have to be so careful when she gets sick is because while her body is trying to fight off infections it is burning precious calories that she cannot afford to lose. Failure to thrive is a tricky thing, we are constantly walking a fine line regarding her caloric intake.
Okay, back to Claiborne! Around 12:30am C had an ultrasound of her belly, when the on call radiologist read it he saw an abscess. When the Drs made rounds we started hearing things like emergency surgery! I'm usually the calm one, the stoic one, but when someone starts talking about cutting into my child that scared the shit out of me. We waited all day for the surgeon, I had given up hope that we would speak to the surgeon Friday when she showed up at nearly 11pm. On her way in she had run into a family friend of ours who happens to be a radiologist at the hospital, she works with a lot of children and her opinion was that it was not an abscess and did not require anything other than heavy doses of antibiotics. Our surgeon agreed and so I quickly retreated from the ledge I had been balancing on. They put her on IV antibiotics and by Saturday late afternoon she was sleeping in her own crib.
If you have ever wondered why Richmond needs a real Children's Hospital what we went through last weekend is a perfect example. I have no doubt that had we gone to any other hospital in Richmond they would have operated on her, thank goodness we went to the one where all of C's Drs are affiliated. Every night in the city of Richmond there is only 1 radiologist on call for the hospitals to rely on. There is only 1 general pediatric surgeon practice and they cover 4 hospitals and are given 24 hours to respond to surgical pages. This is not and should not be acceptable in a city this size, what if Claiborne had actually needed emergency surgery before the surgeon had answered her page? Who would have been operating on her?
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