January
2008
Encore
Friday, I woke up and thought I’d spend the day getting some cleaning up done while my mother was over to help watch Dorrie, and we’d get to start implementing our plan to prevent meltdowns during breastfeeding sessions.
Dorrie woke up and thought she’d like a helicopter ride.
So just around 11 she put her plan into action and had one of her super fun laryngospasmic episodes. Mommy got to try out the ambu-bag and the suction and we got to see just how fast the fire department and EMS could respond to a 911 call. Dorrie got her first ride in an ambulance to the ER, where she discovered that she did not like the ER at all. She especially did not like the fact that no one gave her anything to eat. Luckily a team from the ICN came down with their helicopter and rescued her from the emergency room, taking her back to the place she knows best where two of her primary nurses were waiting to greet her.
Bob headed up after the helicopter by car, and mom and I went back to the house to collect all of Dorrie’s equipment and to pack up some stuff for us for the weekend.
I am eternally grateful that the attending neonatologist (Dr. Optimist) who was on on Friday declared that Dorrie did not have to go to PICU or Pedi and could just come back to the ICN. While I was not thrilled by the fact that she had to go all the way up north, it was also clear to me that the ER had no idea what to do with her. They were understandably confused. They got told a baby was coming in who had had “respiratory arrest” and they received an 11lb baby who shrieked, writhed and was generally mad as hell for the whole two hours she was in their facility. None of their sat probes worked on her; they couldn’t get an IV; they thought her chest X-ray showed she’d aspirated until I pointed out she had BPD and that’s what her lungs look like all the time.
We got back up to the ICN by around 5:45 that evening and Dorrie was still riled up. She had slept a bit on the helicopter flight, but the baby transport box was too small for her (the weight limit is 5kg and upon arrival she weighed in at a whopping 4.975kg) and made her overheated and furious. She pitched a mega-fit, demanding to be taken out, and her temperature remained high for quite some time. Even finally getting fed didn’t do a great deal to make her happier.
She had a good night though, having been completely exhausted by all her upsets during the day, and by morning her O2 requirement was back to normal. Though originally they had intended to keep her at the ICN for observation until Monday, after the RSV and flu screens came back negative and she was clearly not suffering from any illness, they changed that to Sunday and then later said ‘you can leave whenever you want’.
We decided to stick with Sunday just to make sure nothing turns up overnight. We might not have done this if her primaries hadn’t happened to be on this weekend, though.
They decided to tinker a bit with her meds, so we’re now doing a Pepcid trial.
[...] going to the emergency room. Anyone who’s read this blog can guess how we feel about that idea. So, we called Dr. Optimist, who has more faith in our caring skills, and she felt that with [...]