Scraps of thought

ERs. Those are interesting places. Most of the times I've been there (and they have been many since we've moved here) it's been a boring place. We go when we have a medical condition that we can't wisely ride out on our own as opposed to the sort of desperate 120mph race to get help you see on tv or may have even experienced. We've gone for a broken bone, a severe migraine, stitches, an MRSA abscess, a bead in the nose, and a few other things that don't readily come to mind. Each of us except Frieda has had at least one reason to go to the ER. What would we do without insurance?

We went in again this past Friday night with what we thought was a serious asthma attack. Tag started wheezing, retracting, and even vomiting from the whole-body, wracking cough he had. We gave him his rescue puffer three times before heading on over for some help. We've learned to not panic but to always take it seriously. He and I got there only to have his cough change in sound and lessen in intensity. Dx: acute croup. Oddly, that was a relief. He hasn't had a severe attack in a very long time and I was so worried that we were finally starting to breathe easy, as it were, only to be put back on high alert. So the good news was that he didn't need prednisone.

Tag didn't fall asleep until about 1 am (we had gone in at 10:30) but just as he did a patient came in who got a code cath (heart attack). Suddenly the general tone changed. It was only so slightly louder but higher pitched, like controlled, professional urgency determined to do rather than fret. It was interesting to sit in a fatigued daze with all my senses blurred, noticing simple things that someone with a clear mind would recognize as inconsequential and discard without bothering the conscious bit of the brain with such useless info.

We got home around 1:30am but of course Frieda woke up just as I sat on the bed in preparation to sleep. Great. At least I wasn't barely asleep. So, get her settled by 2, only to wake again at 4, then 6, then 8:30. Ugh. When she woke at 4 and 6 she was bright eyed and happy to see me. My fuzzy dumb-info brain compared that to a teenage girlfriend who just had to call in the middle of the night to let me know she was thinking of me, except I have to feed my teenage girlfriend. Her little face and blue eyes just seemed to croon "I'm so happy to see you, were you thinking of me? I had a dream about you. Did you dream about me? What are you thinking right now?"

I'm so glad I'll never be a teenager again. You know, I won't have teenagers for very long (a measly 13 years) but ALL FOUR OF THEM will be teenagers at the same time for a whole year.
Oy. Pass the Motrin. And the Valium. And the chocolate.

It's interesting to deal with an asthma patient. The idea is to keep things balanced enough that they take as little medication as possible without ever getting an attack. Hah. It's just easier to over medicate. But we've been known to err on the side of under medicating. I hate the idea of giving him a steroid every day of his life but he's on the smallest, least frequent dose he can possibly be on without ever getting onto prednisone (for those who don't know what this is, count your lucky stars you've never had to deal with it. addictive, growth hindering, horribly behavior modifying). Good news today after an asthma eval: he's in the 90% for height (60% for weight, sounds about par for the course for the men on Man's side of the family) so he's not only on track, he's flourishing. -sigh of deep relief-