Monday, February 21, 2005

I knew I should've stayed on maternity leave longer!

So I am just getting back from Texas Children's Hospital. This journey started several weeks ago with a stuffy nose and little cough from our littlest family member. It has slowly gotten worse over the past 2 weeks with a climactic temp of 101.7 at 4 AM this morning. So I took him the the MD this morning thinking, why the hell am I doing this? I know what she is gonna say... when they are this young we treat the fever and let them ride it out. Oh how wrong I was.... she poked and prodded every orifice of this 10 week old child. She took blood and urine and did a breathing treatment in the office. After letting the breathing treatment do it's job, she returned and told me she didn't like the results and sent me to the hospital for a chest x-ray. She told me to stay until she had the report so that in case it was bad we could just be admitted.. right around here I start to lose my cool. I can feel myself putting on a calm face like I was putting on make-up... my internal dialogue was going out of control!!
"She is only doing this as a precaution"
"No she's not.. she is doing this because she thinks it is serious"
"It is not serious"
"I knew I should have brought him in earlier"
"But he didn't have any symptoms earlier...besides you were just here 2 weeks ago for his 2 month check up and last week for Max being sick."
"She is blaming you for allowing your sick 2 year old to be around him"
"Ben was sick before Max was"
There truly is nothing worse than trying to comfort an infant when you don't know what is wrong, and you know that they have to hurt him to find out what is wrong, but you have no way of communicating that to him other than repeating the mantra "Mommy is so sorry....I know I know, it's aweful... Mommy is so sorry!"
The result is that he has a viral bronchial infection that is causing all the congestion, but the fact that it is viral means no medicine. Only tylenol to help with the fever, breathing treatments to help the congestion, and prayer that it doesn't get worse and turn into pneumonia.
...will keep ya posted....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So sorry to hear Ben is sick. It's the worst when tiny babies get sick. Only wish I could help, but as you know we are both down over here. Your in our thoughts and prayers. Hang in there.
Love and Light
Linda

Anonymous said...

I wish I could be there to help. I know Ben will be fine but I am sorry that he is sick now. Am thinking of you. Love Tif