On Saturday morning, Elisabeth woke up super fussy so I wasn’t convinced her pain medication was strong enough. It was just the day after her cochlear implant surgery so I called the resident on-call to see what we should do.
I took her bandage off to see how it looked underneath, it looked much better than I imagined!
Elisabeth was so happy to be bandage free, she actually stopped fussing for a few minutes so I could take some pictures.
Since everything looked good, I ultimately took her to the urgent care at the hospital where she was born to get the additional pain medication. We’re usually in and out pretty quick and I knew exactly where to go as opposed to going to the new University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital Emergency Department.
We arrived at urgent care, got checked in and Elisabeth started to run a little fever so they sent us to the emergency room instead. While waiting for the doctor I noticed she had become super hot, so I paged the nurse who came to recheck her temperature. It had soared above 104 degrees in that short span of time. Also, her incision area was looking a puffy and red. NOT COOL.
There was a new plan of action, IV antibiotics, right now.
Ha! Try getting an IV on Elisabeth, she’s a feisty one. It took lots of pokes, three nurses and a distraught mother to finally get that IV in her scalp. It was the only place they could get it.
IV antibiotics were started.
Okay, so her temperature didn’t go down that much and now she’s getting admitted to the hospital. I requested to go back to the U of M as that’s were she had her surgery. We got a lift from the ambulance so the professionals could keep an eye on the IV line and she could also finish her antibiotics on the ride over.
At the U, they did her blood work, put in a new IV because the scalp IV had twisted and no longer worked and she had a lumbar puncture. Not fun but totally necessary to rule out some really bad stuff.
Elisabeth and I had now been up for 22 hours, yes 22. I hadn’t eaten since lunch and had to watch my baby wrestle with many doctors and nurses. She was definitely in FIGHT mode and I’m not sure where all the energy came from or how I even held it together.
I think I’ve mentioned before, she’s strong-willed and spirited…
When they finished testing and antibiotics were done, we were taken up to a room for the rest of the night…I mean morning. It was around 4 am and we were so tired. Elisabeth was not going to let me put her down, not even for a second. She slept on top of me in a big comfy rocking chair until 8 am.
She had more IV antibiotics and pain medication after we woke up and we snuggled while she had her medicine. Elisabeth was feeling a lot better and even had some afternoon visitors, I thought for sure we’d get to go home before dinner. Then she had another fever, so her doctor asked that she stay another night for observation.
When Monday morning rolled around she was back to her old self, fever-free and she was discharged before lunch.
It was so nice to get home and we celebrated by napping for three hours. Elisabeth is feeling great, it has been a little hard to keep her from overdoing it while she is recovering. We’ve been watching her favorite show, Signing Time!, reading lots of books and we even took a walk with the dogs in the stroller between downpours.
It’s such a relief she’s on the mend!
