Cindy pointed out earlier that we're back in the hospital.
This is the 4th time this year.
Over these many visits, we've learned some things. Among other things, we've learned how things are designed to work. That has taught us to recognize when things are going horribly wrong.
I'm so mad about the way things have gone this go-round, that I've got to rant - to get it out of my system before I go back to spend another night.
RANT: ON!
When Cindy checked in with Danee on Sunday afternoon, in addition to the Albuterol nebulizer treatment, the ER doctor also administered a liquid oral steroid to help beef up Danee's lung performance. This was to be repeated roughly every 24 hours.
Monday afternoon, Danee was doing GREAT!! Happy, energetic, no supplemental oxygen, it looked like an easy overnight followed by a morning dismissal! Yee-Haw!
In the midst of this stellar performance, the nurse brought in the day's dosage of steroids. For some reason, she brought it in tablet form, which was crushed and put into some pudding.
Danee's no fool. She's been in da joint enough times to know that any foodstuffs that are soft and squishy are not to be trusted. She flat-out refused, and didn't take a single granule of her medicine. So the nurse said she'd order up a liquid, and we would continue down the happy path we were on. (FYI, I missed all of this - it was during my work time, when Cindy and Tyler were at the hospital)
I returned to relieve Cindy around 8:00 Monday night, and by that time the liquid medicine hadn't shown up yet. Unfortunately, she forgot to tell me that we were waiting on it. Danee was still super cute happy girl, ticking away the hours until she got to go home.
Cindy and Ty left around 8:30 - Danee and I settled in with a nice warm bottle and some quality Disney Channel to escort her off to dreamland. She chugged the bottle and started drifting off in my arms.
*BLURP*
And then she puked. Great. I didn't pack an extra shirt. Oh well, it's not TOO bad... I got her into some clean clothes and into bed, then rinsed my shirt in the sink. Almost immediately the alarm was going off that she didn't have enough oxygen in her blood.
Our night time staff was VERY supportive of sending us home in the morning, and if they had to put her on oxygen, that wouldn't happen. So every time the alarm would go off, we were poking, prodding and adjusting Danee so she'd take a big deep breath and silence the dinging. End result: Neither of us got any sleep. I finally lost the battle around 3am, and at 4, they put Danee on Oxygen. *Sigh* - another day.
It wasn't until Cindy showed up at around 10:30 this morning that I learned she had missed a (crucial) dose of her steroids. When we brought this up to the morning nurse, she looked in the computer and said, "No, it was given to her at 4:36 yesterday."
"No, she didn't touch that one, they were supposed to send in a liquid dose, but it never came."
"No, there's no order for a liquid dose, but she was given a dose at 4:36."
"No, she didn't TOUCH that one."
"She must have, because it says right here that it was administered at 4:36 yesterday afternoon."
*holding back urge to freakin' pummel this thick headed woman*
"No. She. Refused. That. Dose. Completely... And. There. Never. Was. Another. Dose. Offered."
(I swear I am not making this up)
"Well it says here that she got one at 4:36, so she didn't miss a dose."
At this point we realized there would be no reasoning with the steroid nazi, so we went to work on getting the NEXT dose here, in liquid form, ASAP. Which turned out to be about 5 hours later.
**INTERMISSION**
That was just the first of our oh-so-frustrating moments today. Stay tuned for more. The last one will make your jaw drop...
Wow. Shameless. Truly shameless. But since I can't work during all this crap, I gotta do something!!
**END INTERMISSION**
Hi, welcome back. Is your computer running smoothly? So another super neat thing happened between yesterday and today, that's causing us to refer to much of yesterday as the black hole. Or the day that time forgot. I dunno, we're still working on a good name for it. But yesterday morning, Danee's lungs were, according to the doctors, not sounding asthmatic, but were instead sounding plugged. I mentioned that the first two times we stayed at their fine establishment, that was the exact problem, and that it was fully cured by nebulizer treatments of a 3% saline solution. (as opposed to the .9% that is a standard saline, which matches our tears) The docs agreed that it was an excellent idea, and almost immediately, I had Danee in my lap with the nebulizer mask on, and she was coughing loose the gunk in her lungs.
It felt good to know that things were moving in the right direction! And a few hours later, she was feeling so much better that we were all kinds of excited!
Guess what? That dose of 3% Saline never got recorded in the computer. If you made it through part one of this rant, you know that the computer is the end-all answer to everything in MultiCare land. (MultiCare is the nearly sole proprietor of health services in Pierce and South King Counties, and owns the hospital we're in.)
That meant that this morning, when the same EXACT situation was being reported in her lungs, and I again suggested the good old 3% treatment, absolutely nothing happened. Because it wasn't in her chart. It hadn't been done this go-round. There were no orders for it. All this from the same nurse who still swears that Danee got her Monday afternoon steroid.
I requested this treatment between 7 and 8 in the morning. It was finally administered at 3 in the afternoon. I'm glad nobody rushed into anything on our baby's behalf.
By this time, even though Danee had been drinking plenty of fluids and peeing plenty of wet diapers, we all agreed that an I.V. would be the best way of administering her remaining medications, so it wouldn't depend on getting past the very powerful rejection mechanism that is her mouth.
The I.V. was inserted while I was out of the room, but when I came back it looked good. Hadn't been hooked up to anything yet, but it looked like a good clean install. We've seen some bad ones, so we know these things now.
An hour or so later, I went to sit in the chair / couch / bed thing where I've lived the last couple days, and saw something between the seat cushion and the arm of the chair.
When I pulled it out, my jaw dropped, and I very well may have shot blood from my eyes.
It was another I.V. needle. Thankfully, it was brand new and still in its sterile packaging.
But that sterile packaging was meant to be opened quickly and easily, and our baby is a MASTER at opening things that she isn't supposed to get into. If she had found that instead of me or Cindy, she would have VERY easily started playing doctor on herself with it.
We showed it to our nurse, who didn't seem particularly concerned, just took it, dropped it in the hazardous materials bin, and left the room again.
So by 6:00 Tuesday evening, Danee's lungs sound as bad as they did when she got there Sunday afternoon. A missed dose of medicine could very well have prevented her returning to that state - maybe not, but missing it certainly didn't help... There's no end in sight to our stay at the Mary Bridge Suites... Puddle Jumpers has managed to stay open through the VERY appreciated help of assistants, friends, and our awesome daughter Ellysa... Tech Services 4 All operated on a skeleton basis Monday, but did nothing today... and did I mention that there's no end in sight yet?
At least Wednesday promises to bring the results from the Cystic Fibrosis test that was administered today. We're all praying very hard for a negative result. We would appreciate you joining us in this effort, and in praying for a quick and full recovery of our sweet little babygirl.
Thanks for reading... and if you ever need pediatric care, I hope you are fortunate enough to go to a non-MultiCare facility.
