Well I had that experience this week.
My Lukester was running fever and then began to have pain in his lower abdomen. Me, being a nurse, don't run my children to the doc right away...you know...it's probably just a "virus"...he will get better. That is until he began to have intense pain, pain so bad that he could not sleep...literally every 15 minutes, the poor baby moaned all night long. So we are thinking appendicitis. We go to local doc, CT ran...no evidence of appendicitis but could be early. WE go home, Luke doesn't eat or drink, up again all night in tears due to pain...no sleep. We make a run to Arkansas Children's hospital (which is two and half hours away). They do all kinds of tests. He is very dehydrated due not drinking as a result of the intensity of pain (literally begging me telling me to help him). It is so hard to see your child in this type of pain. As the day progresses to night, they keep him to evaluate and try to figure this out. Surgeons come, pediatricians, residents, interns...
He gets better the next day...long story short mesenteric adenitis... a virus in the colon that cause your lymph nodes inside the large intestine to inflame and swell causing intense pain. Who knew?! He gets better and better, we are discharged.
It has taken me two days not to get teary eyed throughout the day. You see, Children's Hospital has only children as patients...while this may seem obvious, it didn't really "set in" until I experienced it. Yes, I am a nurse and worked with "peds", but have not worked in a hospital where it was entirely kids. And back then, I was not a mother, I worked with the perspective of a nurse, not a mom with a sick one. It was so heartbreaking. Luke went to play (the day he was feeling better) at Camp Wanna Play. It is a play area set up for the kids. They made Rudolf cookies and got to decorate them, paint, play Wii or XBox, color,...all kinds of fun stuff. In there, we were surrounded by such precious ones that were sick. No hair, hair just growing back, ones like Luke that were just there short term, ones that had no parent there at that time and some that did. All of us had IV poles that the volunteers helped to navigate around to each area. While Luke played the XBOx, I couldn't help but just weep,so grateful Luke was doing better and pain was leaving and for seeing little ones riding in wagons with 4 or 5 IVs coming from their bodies. A group was the singing Christmas carols for the kids, State Police came around and gave out teddy bears. I knew Luke was going to be ok, going to get to go home. However, I greived so badly for the others, the little ones that didn't get to walk out to their car in the sunshine the day we left. The little ones that did not feel like coming to "Camp Wanna Play".
We are home now, but my mind is still there.
2 comments:
Our friends have a 5 month old baby with major heart defects and have not left ACH since she was born.
So glad to hear that Luke is okay! When we had to go to an office connected to ACH for both kids to have their seizures checked out, it was eye opening. Of course, with Maddie we were scared to find out what was going on. After finding out everything was okay, unexplained but okay, we had such a feeling of relief. But also it was so hard to see so many kids and their families for whom it would not be okay. We are definitely blessed to have children who are so healthy and so loved!
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