A Long Night

The emergency room of a regional hospital is not the speediest method for getting treatment. Although we arrived at 5, we were not ushured into an exam room until around 9:00pm. In the mean time we sat in a folding chair and watched the room fill up. Some people were very upset that they had been waiting for over an hour, and the Nurses kept explaining that people are taken in order of urgency and it is a busy night.

When we got back into an exam room we sat and waited for a little while until a nurse came in. They asked for the general story of why we were there. Took a blood pressure, looked in eyes, nose, throat, then said a resident would be in to see us.

The resident came in, asked for our story, looked in her eyes, nose, throat, and felt around her skin and stomach (she gave him the rest of her stomach contents) and then they put her on a no food or water restriction.

He asked lots of questions and seemed frustrated that I didn't know how often she had been peeing, if she was drinking more or less than usual, when her last BM was and if it was loose or firm. I was feeling like a pretty negligent Mom by the time he left.

In the mean time Ada was always talking to anyone that came in, telling them she was all puffy, that her eyes were hazel, and all about her brothers and sisters. She was such a chatterbox that those who came to see her loved visiting.

The nurse came back in, did the blood pressure test again and said the lab would be coming in to take some blood samples. The techs came in to start an IV line and Ada really got scared. Dad held her while they tried to get it in her left hand. But she was so puffy they weren't able to get a line, so after trying and try and trying they finally pulled the needle out, put a bandaide on and tried the right hand. I felt so bad for her.

They were successful in getting the line in her right hand and then took 4 vials of blood to run tests on. Ada was all eyes and ears again wanting to know what and why and everything about what was going on with her blood.

Now a Family Medicine Dr came in and did the same series of eyes, ears, and nose tests, then said they would contact the pediatric Nephrologist on call for instructions. When the Dr came back she said that the Nephrologist suggested Ada be released and we go home and come back in the next day or two to see him in clinic. But because Ada was so miserable and wasn't keeping things down, and since we lived so far away, she decided it would be best to admit Ada into the hospital and work on getting the fluid off to make her more comfortable.

So they started the Admission process (it was now 2 in the am) and gave her an injection, through the IV, of Lasix (a diuretic) to try and get some of the fluid off her. By 3 we were in a room and getting settled. They put us in a room in the NeuroTrama Center. I was given a fold out chair to sleep on, and Dad took the glider. Ada was hooked up to all her machinery to keep her vitals, and hospital staff dropped by to chat with her. They said she was quite famous throughout the emergency floor for her chatty nature and how cute she was.

We were happy to learn she was just to be observed, so as long as the machines stayed hooked up they were just going to let us sleep until morning (for what was left of the night). Gratefully, we fell asleep.