Sunday, November 2, 2008

Long Weekend - I'm Drained


This has been a really long weekend and I'm exhausted, mentally and physically. I should be catching up on journals, which is what I had planned for the weekend. I managed to get caught up on three in the last couple of hours. Guess I will have to find time during the week next week to catch up.

I also want to learn a bit more about how to do things here on blogger. Like change my background to a custom one like you can on myspace or get alerts for entries. On one blog I saw a place where you can subscribe to posts. Now I can't seem to find that option? Maybe I'll just have to get caught up and then check out that google reader. I think AOL did us a favor by throwing us out in the cold. I like this place better. It's a pain learning a new system, but from what I can tell we may have lots more options here.


I have had a rough weekend and I’m glad it’s almost over. My daughter was still not feeling well Friday night and actually started vomiting non-stop around midnight. Then she got the runs so it was constant back and forth trips to the bathroom with the vomit bucket. She had a fever too, not too bad, just low grade, but was also doubled over crying from stomach pain. I tried three times to get Tylenol into her for the fever and pain, and each time up it came! Finally at noon yesterday I figured she just had to be dehydrated so decided to take her to ER. I was pretty sure it was just a virus but I thought maybe they can get her fever down, manage the pain, and just confirm that it was a virus. I figured we’d be home in a couple hours tops and she’d be fine.


Well she was definitely dehydrated, but not fine. After 10 hours and test after test we finally got home around 1am after getting her prescriptions filled. They started an IV immediately with fluids and an injection of something to stop the vomiting. At first the doctor said he’d like to get some blood work and if that came back okay then we’d just wait for the fluids to finish and go home. Not more than 10 minutes later the nurse comes in and says the doc is ordering a cat scan to check her appendix. What?? I said she’s not complaining of pain on just one side it’s her abdomen in general. She said that doesn’t matter and many patients with appendicitis do not complain of pain on just one side. So now our stay is extended a couple hours.


By the time the fluids finished they gave her a cup of contrast to drink hoping it wouldn’t come back up. It didn't. Then we had to wait an hour for that to work it’s way through her system and off we went to CT. Come back from CT and we have to wait at least an hour for results. By now we’ve been there about 4 hours. Around 6pm the nurse comes back and says do we think she can drink water and keep it down. I said I’m sure she’d like to try she’s had nothing to eat or drink in more than 24 hours except for the sips of Gatorade that kept coming back up. She says good because the doctor would like her to have an ultrasound.


Another hour and 40 ounces of water later she vomited all over the bed, her gown, the floor. They get her cleaned up and decided to try the ultrasound anyway but the technician couldn't see anything they needed her bladder fuller. Finally the nurse tells me they HAVE to do an ultrasound because the cat scan showed fluid in her abdomen. They don’t know if from an burst appendix or something else but they NEED to find out. I said well obviously the water isn’t going to stay down so can you see what the options are.


The options are A) insert a catheter and pump fluid into her bladder – NO thanks what’s B? B) Wait for her bladder to fill on it’s own which could take anywhere from 30-90 minutes depending on how much of the water she didn’t throw up and how full her bladder already was. Well before she had the water the other nurse had let her go pee! That was stupid! So we decided to wait it out as we had no other choice. By 9pm we had the ultrasound out of the way and was heading back to ER to wait for results. By now we’ve been in ER about 8 hours.


Finally around 10pm the doctor comes in and tells us the fluid they found was from one of two ruptured cysts on her ovaries. What?? She’s 10! I thought this was an adult issue? So I am still in shock over this. Not only that but I have to take her in a week to an OBGYN. I am not looking forward to it. And I have news for the OBGYN, there will be no pelvic exams on my 10 year old. I sincerely hope there are other options to find out what they need to find out. Of course my husband is just really freaked out over this whole thing. His little girl having a big girl issue and all.


But the good news is she is home and did not need surgery. Which we were terrified was where we were headed last night. The doc says this is something that will just clear up on it’s own, the fluid that is. But we will need to follow up to be sure that fluid did clear up. For now she is in pain but will not take the Vicodin they gave her. She also has a pill to help her not vomit and that seems to be working great. She has to rest, no activity, and she can only have clear liquids until the pain is gone. Talk about a crabby kid! She has chewed both me and my husband out today over nothing each time. Well in hubby’s case it wasn't nothing and he asked for it. He sat down to watch the game with a plate of pizza! He didn’t think of how hungry she is.


Well she’s awake again so I better get off the computer. I’ll be back later to get around to some more journals. If I haven’t been to you yet give me some time. She’ll be off school all next week so I’m hoping to get caught up then. I'm also hoping to get my blog decorated and talk about some new things I want to do in my blog each week!


Have a great Sunday!

Jenna

3 comments:

  1. What a horrible time for your daughter....
    Special thoughts....

    ReplyDelete
  2. your poor daughter!!!! and poor you cause I know it is hard on us moms when our kids are going through things like this

    hoping she feels better soon

    I agree with you; its a good thing to be over here in Blogger; a good learning experience :)

    betty

    ReplyDelete
  3. I know a couple of girls around that age that had cysts on their overies. I hope she feels better soon!

    ReplyDelete