Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Counting down the hours

I'm driving myself crazy this past week, and the closer Friday morning gets, the nuttier I'm becoming!
The other week, I had Deegan, (the cute little messy guy in the picture above;p), at his regular checkup. Everything was fine and dandy, the nurses giggled and told him how handsome he was, and he winked and flirted as he always does. lol.
I had 2 of my other little ones with that day, and they were starting to get cranky and bored, as I expect;p
I really get bothered when you walk into the doctors office, only to find a waiting room filled with people! How and why did they overbook? Why can't I charge them $50 when they are more then 15 minutes late?
After about 45 minutes, the dr comes in. Now, he has been the pediatrician for all 4 of my children, he has delivered them all, (well, Deegan was born in the ambulance, lol), and he has been the family dr for almost 20 years.
So, I was a bit shocked, and quite upset, when he acted as though he met me for the first time. This is not like him, and I know he was very busy that day. But anyway, he went on to inform me that Deegans' head is much to large and he needs a CT scan to see how bad the hydrocephalus is. I never even heard this word before, and when I asked what that was, he started explaining and all I heard was; fluid, skull, brain.
At that moment, I felt like the world exploded, I cried and cried and cried and the kids kept asking what was wrong and Deegan kept looking up at me smiling.
He has already had a few small, very minor issues in his little life. Cleft lip and Club foot, and now this! He has a few more surgeries left in his next few years, to help with his foot and lip. He did have his lip closed at 6 months, and his foot surgery happened at 8 months. He has been casted since birth, and now continues to wear his Ponsetti boots and bar at nighttime. But he is a remarkable young man, and is expected to have a complete recovery. So, this was not something I was hoping to hear at the visit that day.
My ultrasounds did show A lot of things going on with him, and every time i had an ultrasound done, (which was 3 days a week for a few months), they "found" something else wrong with him. (I do have posts about this, and I'm sure this will be the topic of more to come)
Friday at 7am, Deegan and I will be headed to the hospital for his CT scan. I wish there were an easier way of doing this, and I also wish somebody would call me back! I've been trying to find out, are they starting the procedures that day? When does that start? Why, when the doctor wrote, "stat 24 hours", on Deegans referral papers, are we only being seen 19 days later?
The part that I find the hardest, is the "do not let patient eat anything after 11pm the night before" I always had a hard time with that, lol. Even though when we do get to the hospital at 7am, they will say, "Oh, his appointment is not until 9am!" Then we will be stuck in a small room, Deegan wiode awake, and always smiling and talking;p, while we hear the other little babies and small kids crying, certainly because they are HUNGRY!!
Either I will end up crying the whole time, or being so angry that I knock a dr or nurse out, due to the ignorance of making these kids wait so long while the specialists have coffee and cinnamon rolls;p (yes, I've seen this)
I know they are doing their job, but isn't there any way, to make this a more pleasant experience for these kids??
I believe after I drop the other little ones at my mom's for the night, I'm taking Deegan out for some pizza and then after he goes to sleep, I'll be drinking my pot of coffee, and trying to figure out more of this blogging stuff;p Anything to keep my mind off of the next day!

2 comments:

  1. Oh, I'm so sorry. That is a lot for a family to go through. I'll keep you and yours in my prayers. God bless.

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  2. Thank you for the comment, and thank you especially for the prayers;p

    ReplyDelete