Monday, March 10, 2008

A Very Sick Little Boy...

So here's what I've been doing instead of blogging over the past ten days:

  • Waiting in the aptly-named waiting room while my son has emergency surgery
  • Dealing with 8,000 doctors and specialists, none of them nice and only one of them in any way accommodating. Apparently the golden standard in the medical industry for dealing with distraught, sleep-deprived mothers is dismissiveness and sarcasm. I am starting to suspect that there is an entire section of medical textbooks entitled Blaming the Caregiver: An Easy Out When Examination and Diagnosis is Too Time-Consuming.
  • Contemplating how patients heal while being fed nutritionally void foods in an environment filled with toxic chemicals.

Yes, it has been an exciting two weeks. Remember that stomache flu roaring through the house? It ends up three kids had the flu and one had appendicitis. Appendicitis acts just like a stomache flu, so when I took my 12 year old into the ER with what I thought was dehydration, I was shocked when people started talking about CT scans and then emergency surgeries. An ER doctor was screaming at me: How long has your son been this sick? And if I wasn't speechless, I would have told him, not long at all. He was skateboarding on Monday, less than a day and a half before.

He didn't technically have appendicitis by the time I brought him to the hospital. It was then officially peritonitis caused by a ruptured appendix. There was a massive infection followed by respiratory problems from the anesthesia. I am so grateful to all of these doctors for saving my child's life, but would it really have killed them to be a little kinder? And to actually talk to each other before spouting off their theories? At one point, I had three different doctors in our hospital room at the same time, all saying contradictory things and not even registering what the other two were saying. I know they don't listen when I talk, but don't they listen to each other? These people are in charge of making decisions that may save someone's life (or remove it) and they don't know how to turn on their listening ears. Creepy.

The nurses, on the other hand, were angels. And considering that everyone has survived the experience, I'm going to chalk this up as one of those traumatic life experiences that I just have to learn from and then try to forget. And I will, once again, be blogging actively about my crazy little life here in Central Washington.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I hope your kiddo feels better soon!

Emily the Great and Terrible said...

Thanks. He's improving by the day. It's a relief to have everyone getting better and not worse.

Unknown said...

Thank God your little boy is ok. I knew something must of been wrong because you are always so faithful in posting and letting everyone know when you will be away. Thank God it was caught in time, alittle late but in time. God bless you and yours and I hope everyone is up and going soon! God bless you all.

Kelly said...

Oh Dear! I'm happy to hear that he's on the road to recovery, but that's a scary experience.
Healthy healing wishes!

goddessmoon2688 said...

My son was always wanting to stay home from school with the excuse he was sick. I was getting ready for work one morning he came to me and said he was sick. I assumed it was another play to stay home from school he had no fever no signs he was sick. I told him to go back to bed and i would be checking on him from work and Grandma would also be checking on him. I got a frantic call from my mother saying she thought my son was having an Appendicitis attack. I met them at the hospital and after many tests and nurses telling me to be patient they descovered my sons was close to bursting. I have never been so afraid as i was at the moment they told me that. I was so full of anger at myself for taking it for granted he was wanting to play hooky and was not really sick.