Remember my motto?
No ER visits!
We would only be going to the hospital for a scheduled procedure or surgery.
Yeah, well, that lasted all of 2 ½ days.
Matt and I went to bed early Saturday night because we were both just exhausted. When my phone rang at 10:30ish, I was extremely disoriented. It took about half a second for me to realize something was wrong though.
The attending physician at the Mount explained that Abby’s g-tube had fallen out. They weren’t sure when it happened, but thankfully it was before they started her continuous overnight feeds (being on continuous when it happened could mean that milk had gone out of her stomach and into other parts of her body, which would have definitely been bad!) Her infection was also looking worse, so she was being transferred back to UMMC.
Matt and I decided that I would go to the hospital and he would stay at RMH because Caleb was sleeping soundly and Matt needed to be awake for church in the morning. Of course, he would definitely come over if there was any change or concern.
I called the shuttle and headed over, getting to the ER right around 11:30, which is when the doctor said she should be arriving at UMMC.
Silly me! She meant 11:30 hospital time, which meant 12:30 a.m. I forgot.
Never fear though. I had plenty of entertainment while waiting for the ambulance to get here. After all, it was a Saturday night in a Baltimore City hospital. :)
As soon as Abby arrived, they ushered me back to her room where they took a whole bunch of information. The pediatric surgical team came to evaluate her and ordered a new antibiotic. An IV was started without too much drama (yay!) and then the surgical team put the new g-tube in. This one was a bit different than the original that had been placed at surgery. It took them quite a while to get the balloon to fill up and they were worried that the site was too inflamed, but they finally were successful.
By this point, Abby had successfully knocked her trach tubing off approximately 56 times in loud protest of all of this nonsense. The sounding of several different alarms because of rapid heart rates and breathing must have given her some sense of satisfaction as well, because it was quite noisy in her little room.
The reason is still unclear because we knew she’d be admitted from the start, but it took until 3:00 a.m. to get Abby moved to a room. It’s the whole hurry up and wait philosophy that is oh-so-familiar to me.
We were finally brought up to the pediatric floor where she was placed in the Intermediate Care Unit. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll remember that I was also in the IMC several times during my month here. (Flash back: absolutely no privacy, the woman to my left throwing up all night, the woman to my right screaming “Help Me!” every time she went to the bathroom, turning on the overhead lights every time they had to do vitals on any of us…) Thankfully, this IMC is not used as overflow and is actually quite nice! Abby has her own room with a bathroom, and the nurse keeps a very close eye on her. The privacy is kind of nice and I was able to sleep in the same room with her for the first time ever!
Pediatric surgery came to check on her this morning and they said that the site looked better and that she should be able to get her button tomorrow. The button is kind of a little port that is put in where you can just hook up the long tube when she is actually feeding. It’s much less noticeable than the big ol’ tube hanging out! We'll hopefully be able to be transferred back to the Mount after the button is placed, never to return to UMMC through the ER again!!!
I really don’t like late-night phone calls from doctors. They scare me.
And Abby and I will definitely be having a talk about the No ER Visits rule. She’s definitely going into time out for breaking that one… :)
No ER visits!
We would only be going to the hospital for a scheduled procedure or surgery.
Yeah, well, that lasted all of 2 ½ days.
Matt and I went to bed early Saturday night because we were both just exhausted. When my phone rang at 10:30ish, I was extremely disoriented. It took about half a second for me to realize something was wrong though.
The attending physician at the Mount explained that Abby’s g-tube had fallen out. They weren’t sure when it happened, but thankfully it was before they started her continuous overnight feeds (being on continuous when it happened could mean that milk had gone out of her stomach and into other parts of her body, which would have definitely been bad!) Her infection was also looking worse, so she was being transferred back to UMMC.
Matt and I decided that I would go to the hospital and he would stay at RMH because Caleb was sleeping soundly and Matt needed to be awake for church in the morning. Of course, he would definitely come over if there was any change or concern.
I called the shuttle and headed over, getting to the ER right around 11:30, which is when the doctor said she should be arriving at UMMC.
Silly me! She meant 11:30 hospital time, which meant 12:30 a.m. I forgot.
Never fear though. I had plenty of entertainment while waiting for the ambulance to get here. After all, it was a Saturday night in a Baltimore City hospital. :)
As soon as Abby arrived, they ushered me back to her room where they took a whole bunch of information. The pediatric surgical team came to evaluate her and ordered a new antibiotic. An IV was started without too much drama (yay!) and then the surgical team put the new g-tube in. This one was a bit different than the original that had been placed at surgery. It took them quite a while to get the balloon to fill up and they were worried that the site was too inflamed, but they finally were successful.
By this point, Abby had successfully knocked her trach tubing off approximately 56 times in loud protest of all of this nonsense. The sounding of several different alarms because of rapid heart rates and breathing must have given her some sense of satisfaction as well, because it was quite noisy in her little room.
The reason is still unclear because we knew she’d be admitted from the start, but it took until 3:00 a.m. to get Abby moved to a room. It’s the whole hurry up and wait philosophy that is oh-so-familiar to me.
We were finally brought up to the pediatric floor where she was placed in the Intermediate Care Unit. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll remember that I was also in the IMC several times during my month here. (Flash back: absolutely no privacy, the woman to my left throwing up all night, the woman to my right screaming “Help Me!” every time she went to the bathroom, turning on the overhead lights every time they had to do vitals on any of us…) Thankfully, this IMC is not used as overflow and is actually quite nice! Abby has her own room with a bathroom, and the nurse keeps a very close eye on her. The privacy is kind of nice and I was able to sleep in the same room with her for the first time ever!
Pediatric surgery came to check on her this morning and they said that the site looked better and that she should be able to get her button tomorrow. The button is kind of a little port that is put in where you can just hook up the long tube when she is actually feeding. It’s much less noticeable than the big ol’ tube hanging out! We'll hopefully be able to be transferred back to the Mount after the button is placed, never to return to UMMC through the ER again!!!
I really don’t like late-night phone calls from doctors. They scare me.
And Abby and I will definitely be having a talk about the No ER Visits rule. She’s definitely going into time out for breaking that one… :)
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