Our Day at the ER

Today we spent the day at Children‘s Memorial. Z had been puking every 2-3 days, sometimes after coughing from an asthma attack, sometimes for no reason for the last 2-3 weeks. So, Tania decided to take him to our pediatrician to check it out. He puked in the parking lot. When the pediatrician found that out, he sent her (and then me) to the ER to get a head CT, as Z does have a big head (medical term unrecalled).

We got there ~ 1000a. After waiting with people who imagined they had swine flu, we got into the ER, and they told us not to feed him in case we had to sedate him for the CT. They also took “pre-op” blood tests and talked about a possible admission. This increased the stress level about 100 notches. Since he was tired and thirsty, he began to freak out. He was calm when they put in an IV setup for his eventual sedation, but later freaked out again, and even though we were holding him tight at all limbs, he got his mouth down there and ripped it out. No bleeding, etc., but shook us up even more, as he was as agitated as we had ever seen him. He stayed this way for a good hour. When they came to take him for the CT, Tania kinda broke down. This shook up Z to the point where he stopped writhing and screaming. They kinda papoosed him on the table and he fell right asleep.

Even as they moved him to the CT area, and put the lead suit on me, he fell asleep hard. So, luckily, we didn’t have to sedate him after all. When we got back to our room in the ER, he kinda woke up and got to have his milk. He picked the right 25 minutes to nap. He turned back to our Z almost immediately. The CT came out clean, and similar to a routine CT he had had for his big head a few weeks back, when our nuerologist said to come back only for abnormalities.

The attending nuerologist them wanted us to see an opthamologist to make sure he didn’t have a mass near his optic nerve. We then went up to the opthamology clinic, which was empty, waited for a resident to look him over, which was clean. He had enough eye drops to dialate his eyes that it looked like he smoked five joints. The attending opthomalogist (think Gedde Watanabe) also cleared him, and had just the right smartass demeanor to comfort Z and his parents.

We got back to the ER, and the population inside, we were told, had climbed to 90 kids waiting for treatment, meaning likely 300 people in the waiting room. We were cleared to leave and did so, not out of the ER exit, but through the main entrance. We got home at around 445p.

Our theory now is that the puking is caused by Z outgrowing his dosage of reflux medicine. The serious potential problems were ruled out.

The stress caused contractions in Tania, and we feared we would be going back to the hospital for other reasons. Not until next Thursday….