Hospital Blues...

It’s been a tough two weeks for me, first Olivia had her next set of vaccinations on Tuesday. Three jabs, one in the leg and one in each arm…I thought by the third child I was pretty tough and could do this thing, but I had not banked on my littlest’s response! After distracting Livie after the first Jab, the clinic sister routinely swabbed Olivia’s arm for Jab #2 but my tiny girl knew exactly what that meant and starting shaking her head vehemently saying “ no, no, no”…my heart broke there and then…I felt like the meanest mom ever while trying to console her as she sobbed uncontrolably in my arms. Being a mom isn’t for sissy’s…

Then on Thursday Olivia had her one year ( insert EEEK here)check-up at the paed, which I was kinda dreading as I knew she had not grown like we had hoped. And sure enough, although her milestones are ahead of a full term 12 month baby {Go Livie}, her size and weight is still just dinky! At 11 ½ months she weighs just 7.02Kg’s and is still very comfortable in 3-6 month clothes. {So in essence she looks like a seriously advanced  5 month old  baby.}

The Paed ordered a full blood work up to see if we can find any contributing factors or problems…

Now that is where my tough week got worse, my little mite’s veins are just as tiny as her so you think the nurses at the pathology lab could find a vein!? I very dilligently an hour prior to going applied emla patches in all the relevant places to numb her so as to minimise any pain. What a joke!

After trying with no success while holding down my screaming baby, it was concluded that the standard technique was not going to work, and we’d have to revert to the “messy way” {insert cringe here} this meant inserting a tiny needle into her vein on the top of her little hand (which by the way, was bent backwards in a way that shouldn’t be possible) and over the course of the next hour I proceeded to hold her down while the nurses dripped her blood into the seven vials needed for testing! I don’t know who it was more traumatic for; Olivia, the nurses or me…

Fast forward to Monday morning 2am…I awoke, as I do now and then, wanting to crawl the walls in pain. I dragged myself up, careful not to wake anyone, took my painkillers and warmed my trusty bean bag in the microwave, crawled back into bed and braced myself.

A few hours later, the alarm went, Shane got up dressed for work, brought Livie to me for her feed and left, as he does at 6am…usually by then I have managed to get ontop of it and can get up, get the kids ready for school and take on the day. Not this morning… Kayla came through complaining of not feeling well and Izzy had been up a few times the night before with what I thought was a bladder infection. So I decided to just let them stay at home, as the thought of trying to get up was intimidating to say the least.  By 9am I called Shane at work as I could no longer handle the pain and he rushed home to help and took me straight to the nearest hospital.

There I proceeded to update the General Surgeon on Duty in Casualty as to my condition…here I received the normal expressions such as “you are one lucky lady to be alive!”…But I’ve got to say not feeling so lucky now!!!

Anyway after much discussion, Xrays and failed anti-inflammatories, it was decided to just take a 20mg shot of Cyclomorph (morphine mixed with an antiemetic to stop nausea) intravenously. This eventually numbed the pain and it was agreed that Shane could take me home and if I needed another dose or started vomitting (a sign of a full intestinal obstruction) I would just come back.

Sigh…Today the pain is a bit better and I can function again, but I must say this really is starting to get me down. I know that I should feel lucky to be alive, with all the good things in my life, but…being told that this is it, there is no more that they can do for me for now, that the adhesions are the result of saving my life and that until it is a matter of life and death they will not operate (not that I want another op anyway), and that who I was and what I was capable of is no more – well that just totally sux!

So today I have the blues…but not to worry tomorrow I will put on my big girl panties again and I will be better.