No More Emergencies, Please

Our second trip to the ER was worse than the first. When we went on Friday night I figured it would be busy because it was the weekend; what I didn't count on was the ER being twice as busy on at Monday noon than it had been on Friday night. The place looked like a sold-out movie theatre when we arrived at 12:20 on Monday. It took us two hours just to get triaged and another hour after that before they called us into an exam room in the back.

From there we played the waiting game all friggin' day and night. The ER resident came in first and took the history of the problem with Ty's knee which started two weeks prior and ended up where we were that day. He looked at Ty's knee, said he was going to speak with his supervisor to find out what was going to be done. A while a nurse came in to insert a j-hook into Ty's arm to take blood and to make sure they had an line in place in case they needed to hook up an IV later. Ty had all that done on Friday but they wanted to re-do everything on Monday. He wasn't happy, he doesn't like needles.

The ER resident came back in to tell us the on-call orthopedist would be in to see us in a while. Hours later he did come in and I had to repeat the entire story again. He examined Ty and said he wanted to wait for the labs to come back so he could speak to his supervisor, another ortho, to decide where to go from there. During all of this they wouldn't let Ty eat or drink anything in case any procedures needed to be done.

Ty had eaten a bowl of cereal before we went to the PCP because we thought he'd be cleared to go to school and he would've missed breakfast by then. I hadn't eaten since Sunday evening when I had dinner and I wasn't going to eat when Ty wasn't allowed to eat; it didn't seem fair to me. Both of us were hungry and tired of waiting but we had no other choice. So we waited some more.

The ortho came back in with his supervising ortho and I had to go through the story yet again. Don't doctors actually speak to one another or do they just give little bits and pieces of information? After I finished the story for the umpteenth time she examined Ty and both orthos decided that he needed to have his knee tapped to see if there was any sort of infection in it. His blood work had come back and still show some sort of inflammation even though everything else was as it was supposed to be.

At 10:30 that night - we'd been there for 10 hours already - the ortho came in to tap Ty's knee but then we had to wait another hour for those results to come back. When he got back to us just before midnight he said the result did show an infection in Ty's knee and that they were going to do an irrigation on it Tuesday morning to clean it out, and that they'd put him on IV antibiotics to clear up any remaining bacteria. Ty was permitted to eat, though, even though most surgical patients are NPO after midnight. The ortho convinced his supervisor, who would be doing the procedure, to let Ty eat up until 1:30 so he wouldn't be completely famished by the next day.

I ran down to the cafeteria and got us a small feast. It was really good food but tasted even better, I'm sure, because we were both so hungry. They'd also told us that they didn't have any available rooms in the hospital so we'd be staying in the ER for the night and Ty would be put in a room after his procedure. So we ate and got comfortable - he in the hospital bed, I in the rocking recliner that opened all the way into a bed. We put a movie on Netflix on my laptop and soon Ty was asleep. I was just falling asleep at 2:30 when the nurse came in and said they had a room for Ty and were getting ready to move us. Seriously? I was exhausted as it was.

They moved us to a temporary room where Ty went to sleep right away but I didn't fall asleep again until almost 3:30; about five minutes later both orthos were in the room discussing the procedure. According to them it was 7:00 in the morning. It sure didn't feel that way to me. But I got up and got all our stuff packed up again since they weren't sure if Ty was going back to that room after the procedure or if he was being put into a regular room.

The procedure went quickly; it only took about 45 minutes total. Paul arrived after they'd taken Ty in; he was late because he woke up late and also made Zach and Dolly late for school. He got them on the bus on time the morning before; what was so difficult about doing it a second day in a row? Apparently it was really difficult for him. Whatever, it was done. So Ty was moved back to the temporary room after the procedure and seemed to be doing fine.

Paul left and later that evening - I have no clue what time it was because I was too exhausted to even know what day it was - they moved us into a regular room. It was private, we had our own bathroom, we each had our own TV, and the couch actually folded into a bed for me. Maybe I could actually get some solid sleep unlike the sleep I'd gotten - or had not gotten - in the rocking recliners in the other rooms. That was not to be, however.

Nurses came in during the night to take vitals and check Ty's knee, as is usual for a hospital. A person is supposed to get rest and heal but it's impossible with people coming and going at all hours of the day and night. And, per protocol, they were there at 6:30 Wednesday morning to do their jobs again, waking both Ty and me yet again. Just a few minutes later the resident ortho came in to check Ty's knee and remove the drain from it but Ty was being really uncooperative so I had to leave the room before I flipped. When I got back to the room Ty was in a better mood.

Over the next couple of hours doctors and nurses came and went and finally gave us the okay to be discharged, with a list of instructions to follow. That's how it always is, we all know that. But we didn't care, we just wanted to go home. So almost exactly 48 hours after we entered the ER that second time we were back in the van and heading to the comfort of our home. Both of us were exhausted and cranky and wanted a break from each other; we'd been together almost 24-7 since Friday when I picked him up from school.

It was all worth it, though, because Ty is doing much better; he hasn't had any fever since the procedure was done, he hasn't had any pain meds at all since we've been home, and he's actually walking without the crutches and in a much better mood than he had been in when this all started last Thursday. I just wish it could have all be taken care of with less waiting and faster service. The hospital we were in is for children only so you'd think they'd have quicker methods of doing the work they need to do just to get the children in and out as quickly as possible. Children aren't the best patients, my son being a prime example of that.

But all is well now, just a couple of follow-up visits with doctors over the next two weeks and then Ty will be back in school after the holidays and everything will be back on schedule. I'm just hoping nothing like this happens again with any of my kids because I may have to hurt someone if I ever have to sit in the ER for that length of time again. If I do they may be checking me into the psych ward of the adult hospital across the street. Although, knowing how the children's hospital works, the adult hospital may be worse and I could wait a week just to get locked in a rubber room. Let's hope I never find out.

Until next time...peace to all.