A Case of the Monday's
If you have not read Part 1 and Part 2 of this please scroll down to get the whole story:
Monday in the hospital was particularly challenging, and had its own set of problems to be worked through. Adam had been originally scheduled to leave on Tuesday morning for a business trip to China for 10 days. I am not sure if you have flown lately, but they generally don't let you "take a rain check" or transfer your ticket to someone else the day before you are to leave. This presented quite a problem since it was pretty apparent that we were not going to be leaving the hospital anytime soon. Because Adam works for my dad we had the luxury of letting him figure out how all that was going to work. If you know my dad, you know that if anyone can get something done that most people can't....its him. So sure enough, about midway through the day he called to tell us that not only was Adam going to be able to stay here, but that my dad was going to go to China in his place so that everything could still go on as planned! Thank you Lord for working that out!
Our day was particularly challenging because the medicine that they had to give Henley to stop the seizures made her absolutely crazy. She wanted no one but me to hold her, but didn't want even me to hold her most of the time. She would literally thrash around constantly like a squirmy two year old wanting to get down and run around. However, she was so wobbly from the medicines, she was unable to support her own weight. We tried to go into the playroom next to our room and let her crawl around but even that proved to be too difficult. I can honestly say, having to hold a feisty, drugged up two year old with an IV in one arm all day long was maybe one of the most physically challenging things I have ever done.
From the minute we all woke up on Monday morning there were a constant stream of people walking in and out of our room. Henley woke up with a strange cough that she had not had previously and so because of her potential MRI and sedation pending, they decided to start her on a round of steroids and breathing treatments. We had nurses coming to take vitals ever 4 hours, Respiratory therapist coming in every 6 hours to give breathing treatments, The Neurology Nurse Practitioner came in and spent about 45 min- an hour asking us medical history questions and checking Henley's reflexes etc. We spoke with the Pediatrician on the floor, the Neurologist, GI Specialist, Child Life Specialist etc. It was a lot to take in....all while trying to wrestle our child who I did not even recognize.
While talking to the Neurology Nurse Practitioner she mentioned that they might go ahead and do the MRI. I asked her at that time if she thought there might be ANY chance at all we could get GI to go ahead and do the things they were scheduled to do while Henley was under for the MRI. Both the nurse practitioner and the pediatrician who we spoke to felt like it was highly unlikely for us to be able to get all of those things coordinated last minute, but I asked them if they could please try. I knew that if God wanted to, he could change up everyone's schedules just as he did Adam's to get all of these test run at the same time while Henley was under anesthesia. Sure enough, later that evening a GI Specialist walked in. It was a different GI Specialist than the one we had met with previously, but he works in the same office as the one we saw before. He said "It looks like we are all on board for little miss Henley on Wednesday!" I just smiled because I knew that it was only by the hand of God that this all worked out too. We talked about the procedures she would have done (EGD and Colonoscopy) and what all would be involved in the "prep" for the procedures.
I finally was able to get Henley down for a nap and sat outside of the room in a wagon to make phone calls, check emails etc. One phone call I answered and it was Henley's pediatrician. She said "Oh my goodness, what is happening?!?! I just looked at my notes for the day and I can not believe what is going on with her. Tell me everything" I spoke with her for a long time. While I was on the phone with her, Adam got a call from my mother. I was half listening to what he was saying and half listening to our doctor. I gathered from part of Adam's conversation that something was wrong at home so I tuned in. I was able to communicate to Adam that I was on the phone with the pediatrician and Adam said "Great, Tell her that Zane is running 103.0 fever and Haven is running 102.0!" I relayed the message to the doctor and she said "Oh my goodness, tell your mom to bring them in right away!". That was pretty much the end of both of those conversations. Adam decided that he needed to go home to help my mom with getting them to the doctor and then he would come back down to the hospital. Turned out that Haven had strep throat and Zane had a double ear infection. My poor sweet mother was having to hold down the fort at our house AND deal with two miserable children who just wanted their mommy and daddy.
Almost as soon as Adam, left the Neurologist showed up. Did you know that a Neurologist and a Neurosurgeon are two different people? I did not....However, I now know a lot more than I did before. So anyways, we saw the Neurologist. He basically looked at her and took out his reflex hammer and began checking her reflexes. He stood there with the nurse practitioner and went over and over her reflexes. He checked the left foot, then the right, back to the left and then stayed on the right. He kept running this thing along the bottom of her foot from the heal to the toes and I could tell he was not getting the response he wanted. I finally said "What is her foot supposed to be doing?" He said that her left foot when prompted the toes would curl down and on the right side they kept curling upwards. Apparently, her toes are supposed to curl down. He asked if she was walking and I told him that we had tried to let her walk earlier and she just kept falling. I figured that it was the medicine that they had given her. We tried to get her to walk for him and she was really wobbly and kept falling off to the right hand side. Interesting. He said "Well, I think this can definatly be related to the Chiari". In my mind I was thinking "How in the world can you say that, when you have not even seen an MRI!?!" The doctor said at that time that he absolutely wanted to do the MRI while we were in the hospital.
For the rest of the day, we continued to have visitors and people coming to pray over our sweet Henley. We received hundreds of texts, emails, facebook messages, and phone calls. One friend brought us dinner, others brought toys for Henley, and some just showed up to hug us. We felt so loved.
Monday in the hospital was particularly challenging, and had its own set of problems to be worked through. Adam had been originally scheduled to leave on Tuesday morning for a business trip to China for 10 days. I am not sure if you have flown lately, but they generally don't let you "take a rain check" or transfer your ticket to someone else the day before you are to leave. This presented quite a problem since it was pretty apparent that we were not going to be leaving the hospital anytime soon. Because Adam works for my dad we had the luxury of letting him figure out how all that was going to work. If you know my dad, you know that if anyone can get something done that most people can't....its him. So sure enough, about midway through the day he called to tell us that not only was Adam going to be able to stay here, but that my dad was going to go to China in his place so that everything could still go on as planned! Thank you Lord for working that out!
Our day was particularly challenging because the medicine that they had to give Henley to stop the seizures made her absolutely crazy. She wanted no one but me to hold her, but didn't want even me to hold her most of the time. She would literally thrash around constantly like a squirmy two year old wanting to get down and run around. However, she was so wobbly from the medicines, she was unable to support her own weight. We tried to go into the playroom next to our room and let her crawl around but even that proved to be too difficult. I can honestly say, having to hold a feisty, drugged up two year old with an IV in one arm all day long was maybe one of the most physically challenging things I have ever done.
From the minute we all woke up on Monday morning there were a constant stream of people walking in and out of our room. Henley woke up with a strange cough that she had not had previously and so because of her potential MRI and sedation pending, they decided to start her on a round of steroids and breathing treatments. We had nurses coming to take vitals ever 4 hours, Respiratory therapist coming in every 6 hours to give breathing treatments, The Neurology Nurse Practitioner came in and spent about 45 min- an hour asking us medical history questions and checking Henley's reflexes etc. We spoke with the Pediatrician on the floor, the Neurologist, GI Specialist, Child Life Specialist etc. It was a lot to take in....all while trying to wrestle our child who I did not even recognize.
While talking to the Neurology Nurse Practitioner she mentioned that they might go ahead and do the MRI. I asked her at that time if she thought there might be ANY chance at all we could get GI to go ahead and do the things they were scheduled to do while Henley was under for the MRI. Both the nurse practitioner and the pediatrician who we spoke to felt like it was highly unlikely for us to be able to get all of those things coordinated last minute, but I asked them if they could please try. I knew that if God wanted to, he could change up everyone's schedules just as he did Adam's to get all of these test run at the same time while Henley was under anesthesia. Sure enough, later that evening a GI Specialist walked in. It was a different GI Specialist than the one we had met with previously, but he works in the same office as the one we saw before. He said "It looks like we are all on board for little miss Henley on Wednesday!" I just smiled because I knew that it was only by the hand of God that this all worked out too. We talked about the procedures she would have done (EGD and Colonoscopy) and what all would be involved in the "prep" for the procedures.
I finally was able to get Henley down for a nap and sat outside of the room in a wagon to make phone calls, check emails etc. One phone call I answered and it was Henley's pediatrician. She said "Oh my goodness, what is happening?!?! I just looked at my notes for the day and I can not believe what is going on with her. Tell me everything" I spoke with her for a long time. While I was on the phone with her, Adam got a call from my mother. I was half listening to what he was saying and half listening to our doctor. I gathered from part of Adam's conversation that something was wrong at home so I tuned in. I was able to communicate to Adam that I was on the phone with the pediatrician and Adam said "Great, Tell her that Zane is running 103.0 fever and Haven is running 102.0!" I relayed the message to the doctor and she said "Oh my goodness, tell your mom to bring them in right away!". That was pretty much the end of both of those conversations. Adam decided that he needed to go home to help my mom with getting them to the doctor and then he would come back down to the hospital. Turned out that Haven had strep throat and Zane had a double ear infection. My poor sweet mother was having to hold down the fort at our house AND deal with two miserable children who just wanted their mommy and daddy.
Almost as soon as Adam, left the Neurologist showed up. Did you know that a Neurologist and a Neurosurgeon are two different people? I did not....However, I now know a lot more than I did before. So anyways, we saw the Neurologist. He basically looked at her and took out his reflex hammer and began checking her reflexes. He stood there with the nurse practitioner and went over and over her reflexes. He checked the left foot, then the right, back to the left and then stayed on the right. He kept running this thing along the bottom of her foot from the heal to the toes and I could tell he was not getting the response he wanted. I finally said "What is her foot supposed to be doing?" He said that her left foot when prompted the toes would curl down and on the right side they kept curling upwards. Apparently, her toes are supposed to curl down. He asked if she was walking and I told him that we had tried to let her walk earlier and she just kept falling. I figured that it was the medicine that they had given her. We tried to get her to walk for him and she was really wobbly and kept falling off to the right hand side. Interesting. He said "Well, I think this can definatly be related to the Chiari". In my mind I was thinking "How in the world can you say that, when you have not even seen an MRI!?!" The doctor said at that time that he absolutely wanted to do the MRI while we were in the hospital.
For the rest of the day, we continued to have visitors and people coming to pray over our sweet Henley. We received hundreds of texts, emails, facebook messages, and phone calls. One friend brought us dinner, others brought toys for Henley, and some just showed up to hug us. We felt so loved.
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