In the blink of an eye...: Payton's hospital adventure

I have failed as a blogger, and it is sad that it took such a crazy adventure to get me back here, but I wanted to put the details of the past week in writing before I forget them, since it is likely an experience Payton won't remember. This will be a ridiculously long post, but I promise I will end it with some stinkin cute pictures of the girls. Here is the story of our last week-

Sunday: I washed Payton's face and she flinched and cried when I washed her right cheek. I remember thinking, 'hmm...maybe she has a tooth coming in back there" and moving on.

Monday: Chuck gets a call at 2:00 that Payton is running a fever and needs to be picked up. She comes home and spends the night playing with Em on her new swingset. Eats a good supper and seems fine. Again, I think teething, or maybe an er infection. Payton has a history of running fevers with teeth, so this wasn't totally abnormal. My parents were planning on coming into town Tuesday to help me stain the swingset, so I had already planned on taking a personal day, one quick e-mail changed it to a sick day to stay home with the nugget.

Tuesday: Our day started at about 3 a.m. when Payton woke up whimpering. She was hot, running between 103 and 104, and refused milk, which if you know Payton means something is definitely wrong! I try to get some tylenol in her, but she fights that off as well. We spent the next 5 hours on the couch with her tossing and turning, sleeping a few minutes and then waking up upset. I call the dr. at 8 thinking ear infection or strep, due to her refusal of milk. The soonest they can get us in is 10:45, so we spend the next couple of hours tossing and turning and alternating sleeping on Chuck or I. At this point she is simply miserable. We go to the dr. and she immediately notices that her right lymph node is swollen. I immediately feel like bad mommy, as soon as she points it out to me, I see that it is obviously swollen. She prescribes an antibiotic, runs a quick strep that comes back negative, and says ears look clear. The entire time Payton is sleeping on me. She says do whatever we can to keep her hydrated. So a quick stop at Walgreens to pick up apple juice and medicine, then a stop at the Foundation so Chuck can help me give the antibiotic then back home. She drinks about 1/2 a cup of apple juice, but refuses a popsicle. By the time we get home she is sleeping again, so I put her in the crib thinking she will wake up and feel better. Mom and Dad get here, and Dad and I work on the swing set, at 4:30 she is still sleeping so I decide it is time to wake her up and check on her before the drs office closes for the day. When I get her up, the entire right side of her face is swollen and she refuses apple juice, even when mom tries to give it through a syringe. I call the dr. and she says to head to the emergency room so they can do a ct. scan to make sure there is no abscess. She says to prepare for a trip to Peoria if there is an abscess so it can be drained surgically. I start to freak out just a little at this point, but still didn't imagine how it would end up. ER at Macomb was wonderful, got an iv running (only 2 pokes and 1 collapsed vein later) and take her back to ct. The fact that she didn't even fight them when they tried to poke her was clearly a sign she was miserable. The dr. decides to send us to Peoria via ambulance, so Chuck heads home to back a bag and Payton and I loaded into the ambulance. While chit-chatting with the medic riding with us, I learned that he lived 2 houses down from our house several years ago...fun little connection ;) The rest of the ride was spent on my phone trying to keep everyone updated, Payton slept. We arrived in Peoria shortly after 10 and were taken straight to our room (623). The nurse met us and went over the many "perks" of Children's Hospital. We were assigned a nurse and tech and got settled in for the night. The attending came in and basically said nothing would happen until the ENT came in in the morning to look at the ct scan. So I settled in to sleep on the couch and Chuck decided against waking up friends in the middle of the night and slept in the back seat of the van.

Wednesday: Payton is still miserable, we are continuing iv meds and fluids as she is still refusing to eat or drink. ENT resident comes in and says there is an abscess and we are on the schedule for surgery at 1, and should be able to go home the following day if there are no complications. An hour or so later the attending pedi comes in and says he doesn't think there will be surgery, but we had to wait for the ent to confirm. After lunch the ENT confirms that there is no abscess, just an infection so we will continue iv antibiotics overnight. Late in the morning Payton trips over her iv cord and pulls it out, causing blood to spray everywhere, fortunately a nurse had just walked in so the mess was dealt with. Downside...having to stick her for a new iv--no fun! The rest of the day is spent hanging out. Payton is still miserable, so she spends a lot of time sleeping and Chuck and I spend the day updating and hanging out. Martha and Nick send us pizza for lunch, which was fabulous and Pastor Rhee stopped by to visit late in the afternoon.

Thursday: Payton is still running a fever and not much change in the swelling so we are confirmed another night. This was about the point of my 1st breakdown, at this point I hadn't left the hospital at all, and with no end in sight it was wearing my down, so Chuck sends me to Target ;) I do a little shopping for things I hadn't to bring with and some pampering as well. My mom comes from Macomb to pick up Chuck, as they needed to go home that night. After mom and Chuck leave, I get a surprise visitor. Our floor was a secure floor, meaning visitors had to be on our approved visitor list or they can't get on the floor. I got a call from the front desk stating someone was here to visit me. The only problem is that I don't recognize this person's name at all. While I'm mentally trying to figure out what to say, I hear him say in the background that he is a UM pastor from a Peoria church, so I allow him back. Apparently the conference list serve had sent out a prayer request for Payton and so he had come to visit. We had a nice chat while Payton napped and made yet another connection. Our nurse for the day was actually someone whom we had crossed paths with back in our h.s. church days, her father also a UM Pastor. Payton and I spend the rest of the night hanging out, no excitement involved, which I am ok with.

Friday: Attending dr. comes in early and indicates that we may go home on an oral antibiotic with an outpatient recheck on Monday. Ent comes in later in the day and decides that until the fever is gone (which it isn't yet) then we are staying. He says we will add a 2nd antibiotic to the mix to try and get rid of the fever, and that he just doesn't feel comfortable with us leaving while she still has a fever. As much as I didn't want to stay, it was clear at this point Payton was better in than at home, so we stayed. That evening our dear friends visiting and brought me steak and shake, which was wonderful! Mom also stopped by for a visit on the way home from a meeting, so I was not lonely at all! By evening it appears as though Payton's fever has finally broken and she is feeling better. Which means much more difficult to keep her happy. We spent lots of time wandering the halls and playing in the playroom! At this point we were no longer on iv fluids, so she only had to be hooked up to the iv for meds, which made wandering a little easier. Original antibiotic was 30 min. every 6 hours, new antibiotic was every 8 hours for an hour, so we were still spending a good chunk of time hooked up. Payton didn't mind the antibiotic, or even being tethered to a pole, but the saline rinse prior to and after the antibiotic must have been like ice coursing through her veins, cause she screamed every time! By this point she had become a pro at the routine when a nurse walked in, she knew that 1st the ribbit would give her leg a hug (blood pressure) then her finger would glow red (pulse ox), then she would offer her armpit for temp. After all of this she would pull her ankle bracelet out for scanning and then start crying cause the meds were next. Fortunately all the nurses were amazing so it was much less miserable than it could have been.

Saturday and Sunday: The days were starting to become carbon copies of each other, nurses, drs. rounds, meds, walk the halls and play room. Em came to visit both days and Andy, Mattie and Shea hung out for a while Saturday night, helping to make the time pass a little more quickly. Sunday we were informed that Payton would be NPO after midnight, the dr planned on reimaging her neck in the morning and wanted her ready to go in case she needed surgery. The nurse checked and said we were scheduled for between 7:30 and 8, so I wasn't too worried about keeping her happy without milk for too long...little did I know what the morning would hold.

Monday: Everyone is very careful and quiet to let P sleep for as long as possible, knowing that she wasn't going to get breakfast, and more importantly milk, and that would be bad. She finally woke up at about 8:30, still no sign of transport. The nurse calls and they say they are running behind, but that they would get to her as quickly as possible. She does ok for a while, and then begins throwing herself down on the floor in the hallway in front of the kitchen and crying for milk. The nurse calls again, still nothing. Finally at about 10:30 they come up to get us, and we wait another 1/2 hour in u/s!! Not a happy camper. We finally get the imaging down and fortunately the results are read quickly, NO surgery needed :) which means we get to go home!! They want us to stay until her 1st dose of oral antibiotics which is at 2, and after that we are sent home! Possibly the longest 6 days of our lives, and most definitely my longest blog post...so if you made it this far--so pictures of our ordeal!