ER Visit

Last week was really fun! Or something....So, last Tuesday Andrew dumped out John's jar of pennies and was playing with them. Since I didn't want him to swallow another penny, I made him help me clean them up. Well, while he was lying on the floor surrounded by pennies, Andrew popped one in his mouth. I was sitting right next to him and saw him kind of choke on it and then swallow it. He had just swallowed a penny the week before (I know, you'd think we'd learned our lesson) and had been fine, so I wasn't too worried. Later that night, however, he was coughing and wheezing really hard, so I started to wonder if it had something to do with the swallowed penny. I decided to take him to an urgent care place to see what they thought. After we got there and waited for quite awhile, they finally took us back to see the doctor, who, upon hearing what had happened, told me that I needed to take him to the ER. So I drove down the street to Denton Regional, where I spent another half hour trying to keep Andrew relatively calm in the waiting room. They called us back, hooked Andrew up to a machine that monitored his breathing, and then took an x-ray. Funny thing though, no penny appeared in the x-ray. Huh? Seriously, it was so weird. I would have sworn on my LIFE that I saw him swallow that penny. The doctor was still worried about how bad his cough was though, and it looked like there was some infection in his lungs. He wondered if Andrew had perhaps swallowed something plastic (which wouldn't show up on an X-ray) and if it was stuck in an airway and then irritating his lungs. The doctor said he didn't feel like he could say "Oh, I don't know what's wrong" and then send us home. Then came the great news: there was no one at Denton Regional who could put a scope down in Andrew's lungs to check, so they were going to send us down to Children's Medical Center in Dallas. In an ambulance. Oy! I COULD have refused, but they seemed concerned, which made me think I should play it safe and accept. It was hard, because I didn't want to be just blindly accepting whatever they told me, but at the same time, Andrew's health and safety are more important than anything and I didn't really have time to think a lot about what else I could do. So I signed the paper allowing for an ambulance transport and called John to see if he could somehow come with us. I had the car though, and it was already past 11pm (I know we could have called one of our friends to drive him over to the hospital, but I was distracted and there was no way John was going to be the one to call and wake someone up). Anyway, I left it to John to figure out while I tried to keep Andrew from destroying the ER. He was so tired, yet wound up, and was just trying to get into everything. He started crying because I wouldn't let him get down, and then I started crying because I was freaking out imagining how ridiculously expensive it was going to be. It was not fun.

Eventually the ambulance arrived and they hooked Andrew up to all sorts of stuff and wheeled him out to the ambulance. It all seemed very surreal. It's not like they were rushing or turning on the sirens or anything, but it was still weird. Fortunately, this particular ambulance was specifically for children, so the crew was great with Andrew. I wasn't allowed to ride in back with him, so at first he was freaking out, but after a minute with them he was fine. Plus he was excited because they had a TV and they put on an episode of The Wiggles for him (which he'd never seen before but was enthralled by). He was super cute, saying "bump!" as we went over all the speed bumps and "what's that?" throughout the drive.

Here we are on Andrew's little bed at Children's. Andrew was really snuggly with me for a change, so that was really nice at least.

I think we got to Children's around midnight. I filled out some paperwork and waited and waited for someone to come talk to us. John arrived right about the time the doctor came in, so that was nice. He had been able to get our car and follow us down, though as he was driving he got a flat tire and had to get out and put on the spare on the dark freeway at 12am. Fun! Anywho, from 12am to about 9am, we sat in our little ER room, interrupted only a few times to go do x-rays. Andrew FINALLY fell asleep at 3:30am, and we had to carry him in his sleep to do the x-rays. He was pretty traumatized that I couldn't be in the room for the x-rays (pregnancy and all...) but he would go right back to sleep afterwards. While waiting throughout the night/morning for someone to come talk to us, we kept wondering if we'd been forgotten. Turns out they were really busy that night (this story is one of the reasons why) , and we weren't a major case, so we were low on the list. Finally, sometime after 8am, the doctor came in and pretty much said that Andrew was fine, he just had some pneumonia in his lungs (I'm assuming it was leftover from when he was sick in January, since he hasn't been sick since then) and we could go. So basically, we spent all night in an ER to find out the same thing we already knew. And the cost! I can't even handle thinking about it. I really shouldn't complain, because what matters is that Andrew is ok, but it all seems like such a waste to me. Ah hindsight...I would never have agreed to that stupid ambulance ride if I had known that was how it would all turnout. I am very thankful that Andrew is ok though.

We left the ER around 9am, and when we got back to Denton, John had to prepare for his job interview and I had to go get new tires (turns out we needed more than one, yipee). Andrew had slept some at the ER and on the drive home, so he was just nice and awake. When I put him down for his nap at 1pm though, he slept for 4 1/2 hours (which meant I did too :). I finally had to wake him up because I didn't want to mess up his sleep schedule. Anyway, we treated ourselves to Chili's that night and then all came home and crashed. Andrew slept until 10am the next morning (beautiful!) and has actually continued to sleep in every morning since. I'm enjoying it while I can. Here's hoping for no more ER trips in the near future...or EVER, for that matter.

John told me to keep the post short, or else nobody would read it all the way through...so, if you made it this far, thanks for proving him wrong. :)