Charlotte
The Charlotte saga. As you may know, Charlotte was admitted to the hospital for several days. I have to warn you that I haven’t really slept much since Tuesday night, so I’m sorry if this post seems sloppily written. I suddenly find myself with some time, and I figured now is the best time to get the whole saga written while the sequence of events are still (too) fresh in my mind. Because really, I can’t think of anything else. I’ve also written this over the course of a couple days, so it’s probably disjointed. Ah, well.
As of now, I’m sitting in Charlotte’s hospital room, watching her sleep. She’s hooked up to an IV, wearing a hospital gown, and making sucking motions with her mouth as she sleeps. It makes my skin crawl to see her perfect little face, hands, and feet in a hospital bed, hooked up to medical equipment. I try to just see Charlotte, but the context of the hospital room creeps in and overwhelms me when I least expect it. And I just want to cry.
So how did we get here? On Wednesday night, Chris noticed a bloody spot in in Charlotte’s diaper. We took her temperature, which was hovering around 100 degrees, and put her down for the night. We were up with her several times when she’d wake up crying and screaming. Diaper changes were particularly brutal, and the blood, though small in quantity, continued.
As soon as her pediatrician’s office opened on Thursday, I called and got one of the first appointments of the day. We were there for 2 ½ hours while he did a swab of this and that, did a catheter to test for a UTI, examined her, and made lots of phone calls. While all this took place, Charlotte had calmed down, so we decided to go home and I was supposed to call the pediatrician if her fever spiked or her bouts of pain seemed to return. I called him that afternoon after Charlotte woke up from her nap. Her temperature was 102.4 and she was hysterical. The pediatrician said to go to the emergency room at Shady Grove (where Charlotte was born), and he called ahead to give them a heads up we were coming. He suspected intussusception, where I guess part of the intestine telescopes into part of another intestine. Or something. If that was the case, it was crucial that she get treated immediately.
I called Chris at work and told him to meet me at the emergency room, packed up Charlotte, and zipped over as fast as I could. In triage, Charlotte’s temperature was 103.5 degrees and during the minute she had her diaper off, she left a big bloody spot on Chris’s pants.
We quickly were sent to the pediatric ER--we were fortunate that this hospital had one, which I’m sure is why our pediatrician is so closely associated with it. There, nurses struggled to get an IV going in Charlotte’s right arm and take some blood. I held down her legs, and Chris held her left arm and rubbed her head. Remember, Charlotte was a very sick girl undergoing all this, and oh how she wailed. This was the point at which I cracked and started to cry myself.
A couple doctors looked her over. X-rays were ordered, so off we went. By now it was about 8 p.m. or so, well past Charlotte’s bedtime. She was now tired and cranky in addition to being sick. She hated the x-rays, as expected. They showed enough of something that the doctors (who had spoken with our pediatrician) felt she should get the next test, which involved shooting barium (I think) up her bottom via an enema while a radiologist checked to see if the liquid hit any blockage points in her intestines.
The test was horrifying. In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have been there for it. They stuck Charlotte’s ankles together and then strapped them to a board where she was laid with her arms out--which I had the joy of holding down. My child truly looked like she was being crucified. She screamed and screamed, crying hysterically and looking up at me in absolute panic, tears soaking her. The test took forever--it just went on and on and on. And my girl did not stop screaming. Chris looked like he was about to pass out, and I felt like I was taking part in some sort of surreal nightmare. This was my baby!
After that, we returned to the ER. Charlotte, exhausted, fell asleep in my arms while the doctors theorized. The barium test showed no blockages in her instestines, which was great--except we still didn’t know the problem. Then the blood tests came back, showing an elevated white blood cell count. The doctors assumed some sort of infection, but they didn’t know what kind. They admitted her for the night. The doctor on the pediatric floor had noted that her digestive system was extremely slow [update: apparently it had completely stopped--we did not realize that at the time] and wanted us to not feed her for the rest of the night or the next day, regardless of how she fussed. I flatly refused, saying her appetite was fine, she wasn’t vomiting, and bottles had been one of the few things to soothe her in the past 24 hours. The doctor backed off.
Chris ran home to get some things and I had him bring back contraband formula in case they tried to restrict her food, but fortunately her digestive system kicked back into gear. Better yet, that doctor’s shift ended at 7:00 a.m.., and everyone from then on encouraged us to feed feed feed Charlotte. (And all the doctors were, I have to say, really, truly wonderful.) By now, Charlotte was terrified of anybody who came near her, except for Chris or me. She was exhausted, though, and slept fitfully throughout the night. Chris stayed with her the first night, and I arrived home at 2:00 a.m. Despite being utterly drained, I couldn’t sleep---my stomach was in knots as I re-lived the day’s events. I couldn’t even bear to go into her empty bedroom. It was too surreal.
I returned to the hospital the next morning, and found Charlotte snuggled up in her daddy’s arms. They had tortured her with getting more blood samples---only for the doctor to say that not enough blood was gathered for the white blood cell count and they had to do it again. So Chris and I held her down for more pricks, but they struggle so much to find veins on chubby babies I guess. They also sent a sample of her poo off to determine which bacteria was making her sick to determine whether to start antibiotics. In the meantime, Charlotte started crying uncontrollably every time the hospital room door opened---with good reason.
Then, unexpectedly, Charlotte’s fever, which had been under control up until now, spiked at 103.1. The doctor did not like that. Finally, the doctor told us the poo sample came back completely negative. This was alarming because everyone expected to solve the mystery with the poop. Worse yet was that Charlotte’s white blood cell count was still as high as the night before. The doctor had expected it to be lower. So next was the wait on the UTI swab from the day before and a test of her blood for infection, but the doctor was openly skeptical that either of these things was the culprit. Charlotte didn't have the symptoms. Possibilities were dwindling. Most alarming was that the blood was back in her diaper.
This is probably where we hit our darkest hour. Chris drove home to pick up some things for me and some dinner, and I held Charlotte while she slept. For both Chris and me, at this time our minds started going places they shouldn’t go. I felt a desperate tension as the questions before us mounted. As Charlotte stirred, I decided to check her diaper. I had a weird feeling, like I needed to check her diaper again now. When I did, I found a diaper full of blood. Scared to death, I immediately ran to the nurse’s station with the diaper. They scurried off to find the doctor, and the nurse remaining with me in the hallway was the sweetest person ever. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied, anxious to get back to Charlotte. “You’re shaking,” she said.
“Are you sure?” I tried not to burst into tears. “It was just startling to find so much blood,” I said.
“Whatever it is, you’re in the right place,” she assured me, which was enough of a pep talk to keep me sane while I finished cleaning up Charlotte and together enough for a conversation with the doctor. About 30 seconds later, the doctor arrived in the room. She said that she had paged the pediatric gastrointerologist (is that the right word?), and he was on his way. She asked me if Charlotte had experienced a big fall. I said no. While we waited for the gastro doctor, the main doctor she said she wanted to look at Charlotte’s bottom again. Already, her new diaper was getting very bloody.
Chris arrived back around this time, to a room full of medical folk. And with a triumphant “there it is!” the doctor had found the problem: a big abscess that had emerged from under the skin, right at the top tip of Charlotte’s butt crack. It was about the diameter of an apple, sort of domed, and purplish red. So many doctors (and us) had looked this area over. The thing had genuinely appeared out of nowhere, and was leaking weirdly from the butt crack. The doctor lanced it and squeezed all the pus and blood out, which Charlotte HATED, but even I was pretty onboard with this procedure because we had finally found the problem and I knew relieving the pressure would make her feel better!
Soon after this, the pastor at the small church we’ve recently started attending arrived, which surprised me. She had called every hospital in the area looking for Charlotte--and she found us! It was a happy part of the day to be able to share the good news that we had found the cause of Charlotte’s symptoms, and that cause was easily treated. If she had arrived an hour or so earlier, I would have been a blubbery nutcase. They gave Charlotte some antibiotics, which required tinkering with her IV--and the IV didn’t look very good. Oh, Charlotte hated that. They managed to get the medicine into her, but the flushing portion didn’t make it into her vein and instead plumped up her arm. So they pulled out the IV and had her sleep with the arm raised, and the night-shift doctor agreed to not bother with putting in a new IV until 5 am when her next dose of antibiotics was due.
Around 4:00, the nurse woke up Charlotte while getting her temperature, so she decided that now would be the best time to get her next exam and IV out of the way. A mother of a 4-month-old, she told me that she knew how hard it was to watch the IV process with your baby. She suggested taking Charlotte to the treatment room without me. I guiltily agreed to it. I was so drained and couldn’t see how I could stomach another series of IV insertion fumbles. “Don’t worry,” the nurse said, “We’ll put it into her left arm because the right one is so swollen.”
“NOOOO!” I cried, “You can’t! Charlotte sucks her left thumb, and it’s the only thing she has to comfort herself. She HAS TO HAVE her thumb. She has to!” They splint the arm to keep her from bending her arm, so she really can’t move it to her mouth. The nurse was so sweet and promised me they’d do everything they could to save that thumb for sucking. I heard Charlotte screaming down the hall and instantly felt guilty. It broke my heart, and I was absolutely dismayed when they returned saying they couldn’t get it into her foot (instead of the arms) because her feet are so chubby. They had me calm her down while they went to find the charge nurse. There was a vein that might work in the right arm, and apparently this nurse could do just about anything on the first try.
They took her away again, and as I plugged my ears against the crying down the hall, somehow I fell asleep. I have no clue how, and of course I felt guilty for it. I was probably only out for a minute or two, but I woke up with a start, panicked. Where was my baby? I was convinced I had been out for an hour or something. I ran into the hallway, where I found a nurse carrying my baby girl toward me with an IV in her foot (the right arm had failed, but they got a good line in her foot this time), and finally Charlotte could sleep for a couple hours. I didn’t, seeing as how the IV machine is programmed to beep incessantly five times for the freaking antibiotics dosage, so I spent the next 2 hours hustling from the room to the nurses’ station. By the time that got under control, Charlotte was waking up in mild crying fits, needing to be soothed back to sleep. This is a wordy way of saying I got zero sleep.
Before Chris arrived the this morning, Charlotte’s antibiotics kicked in, covering her and me in diarrhea, along with some excess barium from the enema, which was charming. So the nurse and I spent some time cleaning that up, and I made a call to Chris to bring me more clothes. He laughed. I did not.
Today, they said they’re keeping her another night while the medicine and fluids continue through the IV and they monitor her toosh and fever. They’re also waiting for the culture on the pus to come back so the doctors know how tough of a germ they’re fighting and can adjust Charlotte’s antibiotics accordingly. If all goes well, we get to take her home tomorrow (Sunday). So there’s the play-by-play. As you can imagine, we’ve been running on pure adrenaline and only today have had some quiet time while Charlotte takes a looooong, much-needed nap to sort of stop and take a breath.
SUNDAY: Last night, Charlotte’s IV came out of the vein, plumping up her leg, so the whole IV was removed again. This is actually good news because the doctor said we didn’t have to put her through the torture of more botched insertion attempts---so for the first time in a long time, Miss Charlotte is not hooked up to anything! Oh, the joy of holding her without an IV splint on a limb, the tubes to get tangled in, or the cart to lug around! They say she might go home tonight. We’re hopeful. Cautiously hopeful. The love for a child we've brought into this world defies words. When her well-being is threatened, you become even more aware of how much you treasure her and utterly desperate to fix anything that is broken in her little body. I’m kind of in shock that we went from ho-hum routine to a sick day to the ER to the intensely scary parts to normal Charlotte playing with her toys, albeit in a hospital crib, dressed in a pediatric hospital gown.
Regardless, we feel so lucky--because we are! Charlotte has access to excellent medical care, her nurses have been consistently sweet and fabulous, her doctors were determined to find out what was making her sick, and her normal pediatrician has been amazing in staying in contact with the hospital doctors throughout the past few days and checking on her here at the hospital several times. Oh, and Charlotte is expected to be just fine. Our little family of three has pulled tightly together. And whatever bumps we hit, whether they decide to keep Charlotte at the hospital longer, complications arise, or whatever, our girl is so unbelievably tough, and so is this family!
SUNDAY NIGHT: Home! Charlotte is sleeping in her own crib. We'll monitor her closely for the next few days. This little girl is the center of our world, and I'm just amazed at how well she has handled everything. I'm sure I'll update again as the week progresses, but for now, I'm posting this thing. For those of you aware of the situation these past few days, thank you for your sweet words, thoughts, and prayers. We may live far away from everybody, but we knew we weren't alone. Thank you!
As of now, I’m sitting in Charlotte’s hospital room, watching her sleep. She’s hooked up to an IV, wearing a hospital gown, and making sucking motions with her mouth as she sleeps. It makes my skin crawl to see her perfect little face, hands, and feet in a hospital bed, hooked up to medical equipment. I try to just see Charlotte, but the context of the hospital room creeps in and overwhelms me when I least expect it. And I just want to cry.
So how did we get here? On Wednesday night, Chris noticed a bloody spot in in Charlotte’s diaper. We took her temperature, which was hovering around 100 degrees, and put her down for the night. We were up with her several times when she’d wake up crying and screaming. Diaper changes were particularly brutal, and the blood, though small in quantity, continued.
As soon as her pediatrician’s office opened on Thursday, I called and got one of the first appointments of the day. We were there for 2 ½ hours while he did a swab of this and that, did a catheter to test for a UTI, examined her, and made lots of phone calls. While all this took place, Charlotte had calmed down, so we decided to go home and I was supposed to call the pediatrician if her fever spiked or her bouts of pain seemed to return. I called him that afternoon after Charlotte woke up from her nap. Her temperature was 102.4 and she was hysterical. The pediatrician said to go to the emergency room at Shady Grove (where Charlotte was born), and he called ahead to give them a heads up we were coming. He suspected intussusception, where I guess part of the intestine telescopes into part of another intestine. Or something. If that was the case, it was crucial that she get treated immediately.
I called Chris at work and told him to meet me at the emergency room, packed up Charlotte, and zipped over as fast as I could. In triage, Charlotte’s temperature was 103.5 degrees and during the minute she had her diaper off, she left a big bloody spot on Chris’s pants.
We quickly were sent to the pediatric ER--we were fortunate that this hospital had one, which I’m sure is why our pediatrician is so closely associated with it. There, nurses struggled to get an IV going in Charlotte’s right arm and take some blood. I held down her legs, and Chris held her left arm and rubbed her head. Remember, Charlotte was a very sick girl undergoing all this, and oh how she wailed. This was the point at which I cracked and started to cry myself.
A couple doctors looked her over. X-rays were ordered, so off we went. By now it was about 8 p.m. or so, well past Charlotte’s bedtime. She was now tired and cranky in addition to being sick. She hated the x-rays, as expected. They showed enough of something that the doctors (who had spoken with our pediatrician) felt she should get the next test, which involved shooting barium (I think) up her bottom via an enema while a radiologist checked to see if the liquid hit any blockage points in her intestines.
The test was horrifying. In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have been there for it. They stuck Charlotte’s ankles together and then strapped them to a board where she was laid with her arms out--which I had the joy of holding down. My child truly looked like she was being crucified. She screamed and screamed, crying hysterically and looking up at me in absolute panic, tears soaking her. The test took forever--it just went on and on and on. And my girl did not stop screaming. Chris looked like he was about to pass out, and I felt like I was taking part in some sort of surreal nightmare. This was my baby!
After that, we returned to the ER. Charlotte, exhausted, fell asleep in my arms while the doctors theorized. The barium test showed no blockages in her instestines, which was great--except we still didn’t know the problem. Then the blood tests came back, showing an elevated white blood cell count. The doctors assumed some sort of infection, but they didn’t know what kind. They admitted her for the night. The doctor on the pediatric floor had noted that her digestive system was extremely slow [update: apparently it had completely stopped--we did not realize that at the time] and wanted us to not feed her for the rest of the night or the next day, regardless of how she fussed. I flatly refused, saying her appetite was fine, she wasn’t vomiting, and bottles had been one of the few things to soothe her in the past 24 hours. The doctor backed off.
Chris ran home to get some things and I had him bring back contraband formula in case they tried to restrict her food, but fortunately her digestive system kicked back into gear. Better yet, that doctor’s shift ended at 7:00 a.m.., and everyone from then on encouraged us to feed feed feed Charlotte. (And all the doctors were, I have to say, really, truly wonderful.) By now, Charlotte was terrified of anybody who came near her, except for Chris or me. She was exhausted, though, and slept fitfully throughout the night. Chris stayed with her the first night, and I arrived home at 2:00 a.m. Despite being utterly drained, I couldn’t sleep---my stomach was in knots as I re-lived the day’s events. I couldn’t even bear to go into her empty bedroom. It was too surreal.
I returned to the hospital the next morning, and found Charlotte snuggled up in her daddy’s arms. They had tortured her with getting more blood samples---only for the doctor to say that not enough blood was gathered for the white blood cell count and they had to do it again. So Chris and I held her down for more pricks, but they struggle so much to find veins on chubby babies I guess. They also sent a sample of her poo off to determine which bacteria was making her sick to determine whether to start antibiotics. In the meantime, Charlotte started crying uncontrollably every time the hospital room door opened---with good reason.
Then, unexpectedly, Charlotte’s fever, which had been under control up until now, spiked at 103.1. The doctor did not like that. Finally, the doctor told us the poo sample came back completely negative. This was alarming because everyone expected to solve the mystery with the poop. Worse yet was that Charlotte’s white blood cell count was still as high as the night before. The doctor had expected it to be lower. So next was the wait on the UTI swab from the day before and a test of her blood for infection, but the doctor was openly skeptical that either of these things was the culprit. Charlotte didn't have the symptoms. Possibilities were dwindling. Most alarming was that the blood was back in her diaper.
This is probably where we hit our darkest hour. Chris drove home to pick up some things for me and some dinner, and I held Charlotte while she slept. For both Chris and me, at this time our minds started going places they shouldn’t go. I felt a desperate tension as the questions before us mounted. As Charlotte stirred, I decided to check her diaper. I had a weird feeling, like I needed to check her diaper again now. When I did, I found a diaper full of blood. Scared to death, I immediately ran to the nurse’s station with the diaper. They scurried off to find the doctor, and the nurse remaining with me in the hallway was the sweetest person ever. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied, anxious to get back to Charlotte. “You’re shaking,” she said.
“Are you sure?” I tried not to burst into tears. “It was just startling to find so much blood,” I said.
“Whatever it is, you’re in the right place,” she assured me, which was enough of a pep talk to keep me sane while I finished cleaning up Charlotte and together enough for a conversation with the doctor. About 30 seconds later, the doctor arrived in the room. She said that she had paged the pediatric gastrointerologist (is that the right word?), and he was on his way. She asked me if Charlotte had experienced a big fall. I said no. While we waited for the gastro doctor, the main doctor she said she wanted to look at Charlotte’s bottom again. Already, her new diaper was getting very bloody.
Chris arrived back around this time, to a room full of medical folk. And with a triumphant “there it is!” the doctor had found the problem: a big abscess that had emerged from under the skin, right at the top tip of Charlotte’s butt crack. It was about the diameter of an apple, sort of domed, and purplish red. So many doctors (and us) had looked this area over. The thing had genuinely appeared out of nowhere, and was leaking weirdly from the butt crack. The doctor lanced it and squeezed all the pus and blood out, which Charlotte HATED, but even I was pretty onboard with this procedure because we had finally found the problem and I knew relieving the pressure would make her feel better!
Soon after this, the pastor at the small church we’ve recently started attending arrived, which surprised me. She had called every hospital in the area looking for Charlotte--and she found us! It was a happy part of the day to be able to share the good news that we had found the cause of Charlotte’s symptoms, and that cause was easily treated. If she had arrived an hour or so earlier, I would have been a blubbery nutcase. They gave Charlotte some antibiotics, which required tinkering with her IV--and the IV didn’t look very good. Oh, Charlotte hated that. They managed to get the medicine into her, but the flushing portion didn’t make it into her vein and instead plumped up her arm. So they pulled out the IV and had her sleep with the arm raised, and the night-shift doctor agreed to not bother with putting in a new IV until 5 am when her next dose of antibiotics was due.
Around 4:00, the nurse woke up Charlotte while getting her temperature, so she decided that now would be the best time to get her next exam and IV out of the way. A mother of a 4-month-old, she told me that she knew how hard it was to watch the IV process with your baby. She suggested taking Charlotte to the treatment room without me. I guiltily agreed to it. I was so drained and couldn’t see how I could stomach another series of IV insertion fumbles. “Don’t worry,” the nurse said, “We’ll put it into her left arm because the right one is so swollen.”
“NOOOO!” I cried, “You can’t! Charlotte sucks her left thumb, and it’s the only thing she has to comfort herself. She HAS TO HAVE her thumb. She has to!” They splint the arm to keep her from bending her arm, so she really can’t move it to her mouth. The nurse was so sweet and promised me they’d do everything they could to save that thumb for sucking. I heard Charlotte screaming down the hall and instantly felt guilty. It broke my heart, and I was absolutely dismayed when they returned saying they couldn’t get it into her foot (instead of the arms) because her feet are so chubby. They had me calm her down while they went to find the charge nurse. There was a vein that might work in the right arm, and apparently this nurse could do just about anything on the first try.
They took her away again, and as I plugged my ears against the crying down the hall, somehow I fell asleep. I have no clue how, and of course I felt guilty for it. I was probably only out for a minute or two, but I woke up with a start, panicked. Where was my baby? I was convinced I had been out for an hour or something. I ran into the hallway, where I found a nurse carrying my baby girl toward me with an IV in her foot (the right arm had failed, but they got a good line in her foot this time), and finally Charlotte could sleep for a couple hours. I didn’t, seeing as how the IV machine is programmed to beep incessantly five times for the freaking antibiotics dosage, so I spent the next 2 hours hustling from the room to the nurses’ station. By the time that got under control, Charlotte was waking up in mild crying fits, needing to be soothed back to sleep. This is a wordy way of saying I got zero sleep.
Before Chris arrived the this morning, Charlotte’s antibiotics kicked in, covering her and me in diarrhea, along with some excess barium from the enema, which was charming. So the nurse and I spent some time cleaning that up, and I made a call to Chris to bring me more clothes. He laughed. I did not.
Today, they said they’re keeping her another night while the medicine and fluids continue through the IV and they monitor her toosh and fever. They’re also waiting for the culture on the pus to come back so the doctors know how tough of a germ they’re fighting and can adjust Charlotte’s antibiotics accordingly. If all goes well, we get to take her home tomorrow (Sunday). So there’s the play-by-play. As you can imagine, we’ve been running on pure adrenaline and only today have had some quiet time while Charlotte takes a looooong, much-needed nap to sort of stop and take a breath.
SUNDAY: Last night, Charlotte’s IV came out of the vein, plumping up her leg, so the whole IV was removed again. This is actually good news because the doctor said we didn’t have to put her through the torture of more botched insertion attempts---so for the first time in a long time, Miss Charlotte is not hooked up to anything! Oh, the joy of holding her without an IV splint on a limb, the tubes to get tangled in, or the cart to lug around! They say she might go home tonight. We’re hopeful. Cautiously hopeful. The love for a child we've brought into this world defies words. When her well-being is threatened, you become even more aware of how much you treasure her and utterly desperate to fix anything that is broken in her little body. I’m kind of in shock that we went from ho-hum routine to a sick day to the ER to the intensely scary parts to normal Charlotte playing with her toys, albeit in a hospital crib, dressed in a pediatric hospital gown.
Regardless, we feel so lucky--because we are! Charlotte has access to excellent medical care, her nurses have been consistently sweet and fabulous, her doctors were determined to find out what was making her sick, and her normal pediatrician has been amazing in staying in contact with the hospital doctors throughout the past few days and checking on her here at the hospital several times. Oh, and Charlotte is expected to be just fine. Our little family of three has pulled tightly together. And whatever bumps we hit, whether they decide to keep Charlotte at the hospital longer, complications arise, or whatever, our girl is so unbelievably tough, and so is this family!
SUNDAY NIGHT: Home! Charlotte is sleeping in her own crib. We'll monitor her closely for the next few days. This little girl is the center of our world, and I'm just amazed at how well she has handled everything. I'm sure I'll update again as the week progresses, but for now, I'm posting this thing. For those of you aware of the situation these past few days, thank you for your sweet words, thoughts, and prayers. We may live far away from everybody, but we knew we weren't alone. Thank you!
Ashley, I'm so sorry you had to go through this. I'm so happy that Charlotte will be fine:) How scary! I miss you.
ReplyDeleteRenee