Miss Charlie: Third pneumonia...

On sunday the 14th Charlie starting acting very tired and her sats weren't staying up. Not like she was struggling, just hanging low. Early monday morning her pulse-ox woke me up and it was because her pulse was over 200! She was red, breathing fast, and staring blankly at the ceiling. I don't understand why she doesn't cry for me when she gets like that! So anyway, I took her to Licking and they admitted her. Her chest x-ray was spotty, but not more than normal. They started abx "just in case". They placed an IV which sucked because they aren't used to dealing with little kids there. I don't like seeing her get poked numerous times, but considering what we go through at Children's I always head to Licking first. She started doing a little better so they said she could probably go home the next day if she continued to improve. But she got a lot worse through the night and I had doctors and nurses coming in and out of the room all night long. I got NO sleep. They didn't have c-pap available so they started discussing what we should do. I will NOT intubate her so I agreed to transfer her to Children's.

So she rode in the squad and I drove behind them. We had to go through the ER before getting admitted, which was a disaster. Again, they put us in a room and ignored her. No meds, no food, no pulse-ox. So I had to get bitchy again. I'm sure they just *love* me by now. That's ok, the feeling is mutual. :-/ We were in the ER for 7 hours before they got her a room. I found out later that transfers are supposed to have priority over other admissions. Whoops, guess they dropped the ball there.

She never did need the c-pap and again, she started to do a little better. One of the tests they did showed she just had a virus so they stopped the abx and took out her IV. The next day they wanted to send her home mid-afternoon. But she started to get sick again. Her temp was creeping up again when I headed down for lunch and by the time I got back, she looked like hell. I held her and cuddled her. One of the nurses tried to tell me I would make her too warm by holding her. Yeah ok, I'm just going to leave my sick 14 month old in the crib to fuss through her fever. @@ No compassion at all! At one point they took her temp and she was 104.8! Yikes! So they practically flew in with the portable xray machine and 20 minutes later told me it looked like her virus settled in her lungs and she was "getting pneumonia". Whatever that means. Either she has it or she doesn't. I vote for her having it. Because as soon as they started abx again, she improved drastically. She wouldn't have done that if it was just the virus making her fever spike again.

So we left on Thursday.

Right as we were headed out the door, a doctor came in to apologize about the "inconvenience" in the ER. I told him it wasn't about incnvenience, but the horrible care Charlie recieved. And that this is becoming the rule rather than the exception. She missed her meds and subsequently had seizures (not related to the fever since it was during one of her better times), she was not given food and her IV was only running at 10 mls an hour (???) and she was getting dehydrated, I had to ask for a pulse-ox and then it took like half an hour to get there. When I expressed my concern over Charlie getting dehydrated, a doc told me it wasn't a concern because "it takes a lot longer than that to get dehydrated". Um, ok, she has a fever and her urine is orange and smells like cat piss. Sounds a little like dehydration to me! The doctor seemed genuinely concerned and said it sounds like the ER staff needs re-trained. No kidding. Let's hope he wasn't just humoring me. I can't imagine what happens to the kids who don't have a parents like me who know how it all works and know who to bitch to to get stuff to happen. Gah!

Anyway, pics!

At Licking. Cute gown!