More Adventures From The Hospital – Part Two

This is part two of the tale of the longest four days of my life. If you missed what brought us to this point, please read here. And if you haven’t yet checked on the button batteries in your home, please take a few minutes and make sure that they are secure and can’t be opened by your kids.

A full team of anesthesiologists and nurses came into the room to take him back. I stood up, kissed my baby’s face a hundred times and told him that I would see him in just a few minutes. As they disappeared from sight, I collapsed into the rocker beside where the bed had stood and sobbed. I barely let family take my children out of my sight, much less total strangers who are going to knock him unconscious and dig around in his body. It was all a little much, even without the surgery fears. The nurse gave me a few minutes to collect myself before ushering me to the surgery waiting area, where the doctors would come out to let me know how things went within a half hour or so. It was the longest 30 minutes known to man. I wished I’d had my phone charger or my laptop, at this point. I was so lonely and desperate for someone to talk to.

I watched other doctors come out and give updates to families in the waiting room, telling them to wait just a few minutes and they’d be called back to recovery. My eyes were locked on the door. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, the familiar face of the resident who had first visited us in the emergency room came through the door, alongside the head of the GI department, whom I’d also met before surgery. They stopped a few steps in and signaled me to come back.

My heart dropped to my feet. Why couldn’t they update me in the waiting room like everyone else? What was happening? Horrible thoughts raced through my mind as I crossed the room. What were they about to tell me? The fear must have been apparent on my face as they closed the door of the consultation room. The resident plastered on a smile as she informed me that they’d gotten the battery and they couldn’t see any perforation. “See,” she holds up a cup with a really grimy looking silver disc inside, “Wanna keep it?” Uh no, and quite frankly, I never want to see it again.

I breathed a sigh of relief. But then there was the “But” that I was steeling myself for. There were serious burns inside his esophagus. She pulls out two pages of images from the endoscopic camera. My baby had horrible looking patches of varying colors inside his middle esophagus from the battery eating away at him. (I still have these, but decided they were simply too gross and disturbing to share) He needed to be watched, very closely, for awhile to be sure that nothing opened up and that they didn’t miss a small perforation. Oh and by the way, even if it doesn’t perforate, in a few weeks, he could develop stricture and need further surgery. I think my head may have exploded at this point.

They sent me back out to the waiting room, to be called to recovery when he woke and was ready to be moved to a room. I quickly called A to update him on the situation and to tell him not to come up with K, because I didn’t think we’d be leaving anytime soon. After another agonizing 15 minutes, I was able to go back to be with my baby again. Again, he was a complete trooper. He opened his eyes for a moment and gave me a doped up grin, before falling back off to sleep. At this point, we’d been up for more than 24 hours, though he’d napped several times throughout the ordeal. They wheeled us up to a room where we were to wait out the next few days.

We turn and enter the doorway of the room where D was being placed to meet the snotty little face of a one year old boy who was to be our first roommate. He was in a caged crib, so that he could be left alone and not fall out. The nurse asks me if D is a climber, because she can have one of those brought in for him, as well. NO, no the beds with the lower rails are fine. I’ll be right here with him. I can’t imagine him reacting well to being in a cage.

She goes over a list of things about bathrooms and where to find food and how to order things from food services and I don’t even know what else. All I can think about is “Please, lady. Just shut up and leave. He’s sleeping. I haven’t slept in 28 hours. I need to nap for a few minutes before he wakes up.” She finally finishes and I lay down for a few minutes. And then the fun begins.

The cute little boy in the cage on the other side of the curtain begins hacking. This horrible chesty, barky cough. And here is my child with the raw, open burns in his chest, breathing in whatever he was hacking up. I start getting uncomfortable. Then the little darling’s parents show up, with their cell phones, arguing with a family member about how “These F***in’ doctors need to get their sh*t together and send him home because tomorrow’s his first birthday and they already paid for Chuck E Cheese.” Yeah, cause not losing that Chuck E. Cheese deposit is really important when your infant is hacking up a lung. Charming. Of course, this wakes Dev up. The nurses in hourly to do vitals certainly aren’t enough disruption.

The doctors come in, decide the poor hacky needs a breathing treatment, and then the mother leaves again. Dad stuck around for a bit, chatting loudly and very vulgarly on the phone, setting up a booty call for later that night so he didn’t have to stay in the hospital with “that b*tch” again. Nice. They were meeting in room 211 of the Econolodge, if anyone is interested. He finally gets off the phone and decides that he needs someone to talk to. Being I’m the only person in the room (sorta) able to hold up my end of a conversation, he picks me. And then, he decides that he knows me from somewhere. The next hour is spent with him quizzing me on “Do you know this person, that person? Did you ever hang out here?” Numero uno, my friend, I am at least 10 years older than you. I do not know your friends. When I was out clubbing, you were just potty trained. Numero dos, by the way you act, odds are I wouldn’t give you or any of your friends the time of day anyway. Your kid is sick, in the hospital, show some class. He tires of trying to convince me that we were friends in some alternate reality and leaves again and the baby starts to cry. And the more he cries, the more he coughs. Ohhh boy.

The nurse walks in and I must have looked like I was ready to die, because she decides that they should take the little boy into a treatment room for his breathing treatment. Before they even finish with his treatment, she comes back and tells me another room has opened up and we were happily moved across the hall, where we were treated to several hours of quiet and solitude. We cuddled, watched movies and just rested for awhile.

To be continued…