Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen things I learned from our trip to the emergency room last night…

1. Never say anything which you don’t intend to be taken very literally. For example, don’t say “I’ve been alternating Tylenol with warm baths and cool washcloths to lower her fever”. It will be misconstrued. You will be hearing things like “they have a religious issue with Tylenol” muttered from one nurse to another all evening long.

2. If you do make the mistake mentioned in number one, then the only possible way to rectify the situation is to swear your undying love for Tylenol as quickly as possible. “No – I have no problem with Tylenol – in fact, I love the stuff. Yup, dose ‘er up!” seemed to work for me.

3. When you are 18 months old, Old MacDonald Had a Farm can be a very comforting song. Even when sung while having blood drawn from your tiny arm, and through large hot tears running down your face.

4. People in strange blue suits cannot be trusted. If one ever comes into your room, make every effort to convince one or both of your parents to remove you from that room as quickly as possible.

5. X-ray machines ten to be very traumatic and indeed heartbreaking to an 18-month old.

6. If you are unfortunate enough to become acquainted with an x-ray machine, then anyone in your family can be comforting – even your three month old sister.

7. However, even if you call as loudly as your baby lungs allow, your baby sister may not be able to hear or respond to your pleas for help.

8. Another tactic which you may consider: in a very forceful voice, bade the nurses operating the x-ray machine a firm goodbye. Repeatedly. Remember to be polite but forceful. This has mixed results, and while it did not work for Kinsley last night, it is still worth attempting.

9. Just because nurses repeatedly offer to bring you a Popsicle, they probably will never actually get around to bringing one. Even if you ask nicely.

10. If the nurses need a urine sample – that will be the one time that you will not be able to pee.

11. The sticky tape on the top of the urine sample collection bag can be very painful to remove. It may cause apprehension anytime your diaper is changed, for quite some time.

12. There is a special clause to the law of gravity when one is in a hospital. This also applies to Walmart and other public places of dubious cleanliness. The clause is this: anytime a binkster falls from a baby’s mouth or hands, it must land nipple down.

13. When a baby has been poked, prodded, stuck, and otherwise traumatized for an evening, nothing sounds better to her than “my bed”!

~After a few days of severe illness, we phoned our emergency doctor’s office and were told that her symptoms sounded like meningitis and that we needed to take her to the emergency room. If it were meningitis, we might have only had a number of hours to react correctly. In the end, Kinsley did not have meningitis. In fact, she was diagnosed with a sore throat and a fever. It’s hard to say if I regret taking her in or not. On the one hand, I never thought I’d be one of those people who run to the ER for a sore throat and fever. On the other hand, she’d had a fever of 103*-105* for nearly 30 hours, and seemed to have neck pain and a suspicious rash one her neck, and the nurse was of the opinion that she was in danger of seizures at any moment from the fever alone. It’s nice to know that it’s not life threatening at this point.~