ER madness

My 2 year old is sick... again. She has had a fever, threw up a couple days ago, now has a cough and a runny nose and is finding it difficult to sleep... which makes it difficult for me to sleep. She had just one week of health and something new hit her. This is not fun while the hubs is away. But he will be home in a couple days. One more night without him and then he gets to join in all the sickie drama.

Tonight I ended up taking KD to the Emergency Room to check out her cough. She has had bronchitis before, so any time she is coughing a lot I wonder if she has it again. I drove over to Urgent Care first, the not so gross place you can take your sick kid, and I was too late. They close at 5pm on the weekends and I was silly enough not to check their hours before I left the house. I forget there are weekends sometimes. All my days just run together and the weekend is barely any different for me than a week day. Anyways, so I called my in-laws and my worry wart of a mother-in-law got on the phone and asked if I was headed to the ER next. I was thinking (Ugh... no! I hate waiting in ER rooms for hours, and if its not a big deal being sent home and wasting all that time, and subjecting my kid to all those germs and REALLY sick people.) I told her I didn't want to wait for hours and hours in an ER. She said, "Is she okay?" And I said, "Well she isn't about to die or anything, she is coughing, but I can go to the Urgent Care in the morning." She said, "What if she were to stop breathing in the middle of the night? Its better to be safe than sorry." She talked me into at least stopping by the "Minute Clinic" at the local pharmacy, which I thought would be a waste of time. Who are those people and what can they do? She said, "At least you can get a yup or nup on whether you should take her to the ER." So, I called and found out they were closing in 15 minutes... meanwhile I was on the freeway and it was all backed up due to an accident. I figured I wouldn't make it in time. But when I got to the exit I had 10 minutes. So I went ahead and took the exit.

When I got to the nurse at the clinic she was about to leave. I told her what was going on and finally convinced her to at least listen to KD's chest to see if she was wheezing or sounded bad enough that it could possibly be bronchitis. She said she heard a slight wheeze and that the cough sounded bad enough to have her checked out at the ER. She said she couldn't prescribe any anti-biotics since KD didn't have enough symptoms to merit that. Which is fine with me, I don't want to give my kid medicine she doesn't need "just to be safe." So, I reluctantly put KD back in the car and headed to the ER.

I called my MIL and she said she would meet me there. At least when I got the the ER it wasn't crowded and things moved along fairly quickly. The silly thing is the process that I had to go through to get to a Doctor. Step #1 Check in with a guard #2 wait to be called #3 Got called and they basically "triage you"... put you in priority for when your sick kids should be seen #4 wait to be called #5 Got called to a window for some lady to type your info into a computer and check your insurance etc #6 wait to be called in a DIFFERENT waiting area #7 called again... this time to be sent to the pediatric waiting area #8 Called by a nurse to take KD's temp and blood pressure #9 wait to be called #10 called by the Doctor to be seen (finally) #11 after seeing the Dr. wait to be called again (in a different waiting area) to be released #12 finally go home. This all took approximately 2 hours. And the Dr. told me she has a cold, she doesn't have bronchitis (her breathing wasn't that bad) and no treatments were administered or prescribed.

I don't know if the trip to the ER, and the time and silly way of getting to a Doctor, was worth the information I received. I like knowing she just has a cold, but if it weren't for my MIL I would have waited until the next morning and found out the same info and not wasted all night driving from Urgent Care, to the Minute Clinic, and then the ER. Next time I will just do what I want to do and not let the worry wart, over protective, queen of the drama queens, get to me. "What if she stops breathing in the middle of the night?" Goodness woman! We can't allow the "What ifs" in life or our worse fears to control our life! I should have said that to her. I should have said, "I am not worried about that, she is coughing but she is breathing, and she may be miserable right now but this is NOT a life or death situation that bears me taking her to the ER! I will wait until morning to take her." She would have been fine with that, let me be and not said anything more. Nor would she have been offended that I had a different opinion. She is good like that. I just have to remember to trust my own motherly gut over my husband's mother's gut... hers over reacts to the nth degree! And it bugs the heck out of me. But that is who she is, can't change that. I just have to remember to be true to who I am and not listen to a person who, although loves my child and wants the best for her as much as I do, tends to over react and think of the worse scenarios. I like the fact that I am not a worrier and that I am calm and asses the situation with facts, not "what ifs." I don't hypothesize a million different scenarios that just fill my head with dooms day thoughts. And I think that is a strength of mine.

Well, that is enough of all that. I am just glad I am not feeling overly sick lately and that I had the energy for all this. I am finished with week 9 of my pregnancy and that means only two or three more weeks of morning sickness is left in my future! Yay!