[plthijinx]

well to start off with, this year has started out pretty shitty. last thursday i picked my son up from his mom's apartment and we went to Mcdonalds for supper and on to the house to hang out. later on when i took him back to the ex's (shannon from here on out) i stayed for quite awhile to just hang out w/him and her and watch finding nemo. shannon and i still get along pretty well, so it's cool. anyway, right when i was about to leave at 10:00pm he got sick on her wicker sofa. what a mess. he'd been a little under the weather by the way of his diapers (he's 2) but we didn't think too much of it until he threw up. we cleaned up everything and got him situated in his bed and i went on home.

i only worked a half day friday because my son was not doing so well. he couldn't hold anything down including water, soda, etc... i showed up at the apartement around 12:15 or so with pedialite
in hand. it seemed to work ok for a while, at least while i was there. when my ex-mother-in-law showed up i went on ahead and went back to the house. a couple of hours later i get a phone call from shannon saying that she thinks we need to take him to the hospital because he'd gotten sick again and was almost lethargic. i went back over there to try and see what i could do to help and a few minutes after i arrived the doctor had called and said that we needed to go on ahead and take him to the emergency room and that she'd call ahead and let them know that we were on the way with a dehydrated baby. boy, let me tell you, an emergency room on a holiday weekend is madness! the place was packed! we went to admitting/triage and asked if our
doctor had called and of course they said no. side note here people, if your doctor says that he/she is going to call and they say that they have not, call your doctor immediatey!! there
was a break down in communication. my dad is a surgeon here in town and i asked him about call-ins and he said he doesn't bother with them anymore because for some reason the message
never gets to the desk. even if, like in our case we found out the next day, the doctor orders an I.V. for the patient while they wait. anyway, we arrive there at around 6:30 or so and went through triage and then waited. and waited. around 12:30am the ER head nurse came out and told everyone that the ER was now on drive-by status for ambulances and that they were going to direct walk-ins to other hospitals as well. then she said that it was going to be roughly 4-5 hours before most of us would be seen. at this point my son had stopped vomiting (he had'nt the whole time we were there) and was taking in fluids and crackers so we felt as if we could go back to shannon's apartment and take care of him there and come back if necessary.

saturday i woke up around noon or so and called shannon to see how our son was doing. not too bad, a little thirsty but not too bad. boy was the doctor pissed when she found out the ER never got the message or passed it along to triage. anyway i showed up with several flavors of gatorade in hand b/c he wasn't drinking the pedialite any longer. he took to the gatorade ok and things seemed much better than the night before. i hung out for a while then went back to my house to take a nap. here's where everything started getting fubared. around five or so shannon called me and told me that she was going to call an ambulance if the doctor didn't call back soon and that our son was getting sick,
not drinking, and being lethargic again only worse than the night before. i got up and not 15-20 minutes later she called again telling me the ambulance was on the way. they had come and gone by the time i got to her apartment and she only lives 10
minutes from my house. anyway they took him to a different hospital than we went to the night before and thank heavens! he wasn't there 20 minutes (with a crowded ER) and
he was in a room. (slang is this b/c he came in on an ambulance or they realized his condition?) about 15 minutes after we got him in there he got sick. we're talking lunch from 3 days ago sick and that bought him an automatic I.V. i felt so helpless for him. standing there and not knowing what to do to help him feel better. after a while the ER doc came in and looked him over and
told us that if he didn't respond well to the I.V. that he was going to have to stay in their CDU ward (Clinical Decision Unit) over night but that it was only a 23 hour ward and that he'd
have to transfer to another hospital if need be b/c the hospital we were in didn't have pediatrics. well as it turned out he had to stay over night. since i live about 5 mins or less from the hospital
we decided that i would go home for the night and if they needed anything i would be right there. i fell asleep around 1:30 or so and the phone rang at 5:00. they needed more diapers and needed me to run some errands for them. i showed up at the CDU at about 5:15 or so and he was sleeping but did not look good at all. he would try to wake up but his eyes would just sag and his lids would close. poor guy. i stayed until around 6 or so and then ran the errands for trevor and shannon. later i returned around 10 with his favorite blanket and his pooh bear puppet/cape fresh out of the dryer (he'd gotten sick on them overnight) that day was a living hell to see my son, let alone a
two year old in that condition. elspode, you have my upmost respect sir. for those of you who
have been following his tribulations, you know what i mean. by twelve o'clock he was halfway through
his second I.V. and was sort of awake. then by four he was drinking water, tea, sprite and ice chips.
later on they changed out his I.V. for another and things were on the up and up. he was playing
with the controls on the bed, asking me to play movies for him and the like. at 8:30 we were
discharged. god what a night/day/evening/weekend.

monday i went to the apartment to see my boy and when i got there he tried to get up from
laying on the couch to say hi to me but i told him to rest and be still. he fell right back to sleep.
we kept trying to wake him to take a drink but he'd refuse to drink. this went on for a few hours.
we had written it off as him being exhausted from the weekend and didn't think much of it. when
i was leaving shannon asked me to go get the prescription from her truck and take it with me
and drop it off at the walgreens so if they needed it they wouldn't have to wait (it was for nausia) i looked all over that truck and finally found it under the rear seat. on the handout they gave us when we left it said that "come back immediately if:" excessive sleeping, no fluid intake, no urine for 8 hours, etc..... he had peed but the other two left something to be desired. we called the doc right away. funny thing here is that he realized what we were doing and almost immediately started drinking his sprite! he went from a lethargic type sleep to "boing!" gimme something to drink!! he didn't want to go back to the ER! by the time we'd gotten off the phone with the doc he'd drank a whole sprite and about a cup and a half of water! then about an hour later he asked mommy for an egg! it was such a relief. today is wednesday and he's doing wonderful now. apparently he had an intestinal virus that was diagnosed as a strain of e-coli. i can't remember the term. gastertinitis or something? anyone? sorry for the long-assed post but just wanted to talk about it is all and to thank all paramedics/emt's and the ER nurses and doctors at west houston memorial. thanks guys.