Pain Turns Into Misery aka Yesterday Afternoon's Adventure

As many of you know Cadence still will not walk or even attempt to walk on his now-healed broken leg.... but he will ride his bike and crawl all over the house (unless I ask him to do something, then he needs to be carried, smart kid). He got a pressure sore from the first splint that was put on in Yellowstone, so we went to the Instacare here and got a different splint after a week. He wore that one for another two weeks and then we took that off and have been trying to get Cadence to try walking.

The pressure sore at first just looked like a silver-dollar size purple bruise where the circulation had been cut off for so long (boy, do I feel like a great mother), then it blistered, burst, and hasn't ever looked very great. Yesterday I was giving the boys a bath before naptime and Cadence screamed the entire time (normally he loves baths) because he didn't want his owie in the water... needless to say his behavior freaked me out... this on top of not normal behavior for the last three weeks and not walking still.

So, I called the Doctors office to take him in and be checked out-- his doctor was out and the other two were swamped, so I had to take him back to the Instacare. So, I packed up all three kids and left the house at 2:30. The Instacare doctor took one look and said "I'm worried that it might be an infection into the bone since he won't walk on it at all, and that spot is so close to the bone. You need to take him to a wound clinic..... or better yet, take him to the ER at Primary Children's Hospital."

So, I packed up all the kids (the nurses offered to help carry out to the car, but I figured it's been a month of carrying Cade, a baby in a carseat, and Brennan trailing behind so I'm pretty used to it-- the Dr said I have four arms) and headed off across the valley to Primary Children's... I called Michael on the way and he talked to his boss who said he could leave to help me, so I picked him up. We arrived at the Emergency room at 4pm.

Funny thing about hospitals- why does mostly everyone have to go through the ER to be seen? Seems like you could walk in to the front desk and say "Hi, I need to see the wound specialist." or "Hi, I broke my leg and need to see the orthopaedic surgeon." But no, everyone has to go through the ER.

We got checked in- Cade got a hospital bracelet and Brennan was jealous. They took us to a room where we waited for awhile, then they took us to go get new xrays of Cade's leg, foot and heel (trying to see if the bone was infected), then we waited back in the room for awhile... then they came in to do some blood work to check for blood markers that would indicate an infection. Let me tell you, Cade LOVED that... they took blood from the back of his hand and placed an IV just in case he needed anything later. Cade screamed and screamed and screamed. I held him the whole time and Michael held his other hand. Poor baby.

Michael asked for a TV and movies as I was holding Cade screaming and trying to distract him with a book after his hand was all taped up on a "pillow" (I regret not having the camera for how pathetic Cade looked, and how cute he was after he calmed down). Toy Story 2 did wonders.

Then we had to wait for the blood work to come back. Up to this point someone had been in to the room every five or ten minutes to talk to us-- the resident Dr, the admin nurse to get $$ info, the nurse, the blood team, the radiology tech, the boss Dr, another Dr who wanted to take a look, etc. (They talked about coming back today for a bone scan if the xrays didn't look great, etc.) After they took Cade's blood they said it would be about a half hour before it came back, and meanwhile the radiologist was looking at the xrays, so they'd let us know as soon as possible.

We watched ALL of Toy Story 2... well, we watched from the middle to the end, rewound it and watched from the beginning back to the middle (we were in crisis mode with Cade and couldn't wait to rewind, so just pushed play wherever it was). No one came in until we were almost full circle... and then Michael had to go and ask what was going on because we were entirely tired of waiting and very hungry. (Cade wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything).

Finally a new doctor came in and said she'd taken over the case and that everything appeared to be normal on the xrays and bloodwork, so for now it's a localized infection so Cade will take antibiotics for the next 10 days to clear it up and help the wound heal. If it starts looking worse, go back to Primary's pronto, if it doesn't get better within two days follow up with the family Dr, if he doesn't start walking on it in the next week, go to the Dr, etc.

Then she brought in a popsicle for Cade and Brennan and said the nurse would be in soon to take out the IV and discharge papers. They finished their popsicles and got cleaned up before he came in... he took out the IV which of course made Cade scream again, but not for too long this time, we signed the papers and were FINALLY able to leave. It was 8pm.

The reason we had to wait so long in the room.... shift change!! Hospitals really need to figure that out- they really can't leave people waiting so long just because one shift is leaving and the other one is coming on. Oh well.

We went to the first place we could find for dinner- a Wendy's. First the hamburgers came with pickles and mustard, which is fine for me and the kids (we take off the pickles... gross), but it's not fine for Michael who detests mustard with a passion. So he exchanged his hamburgers for non-mustardy ones. Meanwhile the kids and I are eating... until I find a hair in my sandwich. Lost my appetite! We returned that disgusting sandwich to the people and didn't even get an apology, and got our measly 99 cents back for the sandwich. Ah well, at least the milkshake was tasty.

We had to go get Michael's car from his work, so we got home about 9:30 and put the kids to bed. Then I got busy-- afterall, I'd just spent the last 8 hours doing unplanned things that definitely weren't on the days agenda. (I'm doing a fair tomorrow with my bows and dresses, in case you didn't know, and had a million things on my to do list that didn't get done and most likely won't.)

But, at least we know that Cade's owie isn't horrendous and dangerous to him, and hopefully we can get it healed quickly so he can start walking (the xrays showed that the bone is mostly healed and ready for walking now). What a day.

Apparently Brennan was a little jealous of all the attention Cade was getting because on the way home in the car Brennan pipes up "I'm going to break my foot and go to the doctor." We said "No thank you!" and he started crying... poor little kid cooped up in a hospital room all day. We consoled him by reminding him that he got a sticker and a popsicle too, and that was the fun part of the whole day.

We're sworn off of hospitals, Instacare's, medical clinics on vacation, doctors, etc. for as long as possible now. Wonder how expensive this souveneir is now??? Definitely went over our accident rider limit on this one...

So, all that time spent at the hospital yesterday and a million other things to do and what do I do first thing this morning? Blog of course!