I had my week all planned out. I even used the Reminders app on my phone to remind me what project to start and at what time. For example, on Monday I was to read 60 pages of "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" - a little (ok, not so little) book about physics. I was also to write a few articles in between lunch with a friend, enjoy a minor cleaning spree and of course, tend to the never ending laundry. As Mondays go, it was pretty mellow. But per usual in life, the shit has to hit the fan sometimes. Tuesday was one of those days....
Tuesday morning Biddle woke up complaining of stomach pain. And she refused to eat breakfast. To tell you the truth, that's when I started worrying a little bit because Biddle is what we like to call a "good eater" (aka human trash compacter). After dropping Pie off at her school, Biddle and I came home and I got her situated on the couch. I tried to push fluids but she was not interested. She had a slight fever and seemed tired, so I sat with her and watched one of her favorite shows - TLC's A Baby Story. (Yes, my 5y.o. likes medical shows and babies, so that show is perfect for her.)
Anyway, as the day progressed so did her fever. When it reached 102, I called the pediatricians office and they told me that although our regular pediatrician wasn't available, there was another one we could see. So after a brief nap, I woke Biddle up and off to the doctor's office we went.
The new (to us) doctor seemed very nice and listened (I think) to me as I spouted off my daughter's convoluted and miraculous medical history. At one point she had Biddle lie down on the exam table and she proceeded to push on her stomach. Biddle would alternate between laughing and saying "Ow", which is pretty much what I would do if someone was pressing my innards down into my spine. She decided that appendicitis might be the culprit.
We were sent to a lab connected with the local children's hospital (which is not affiliated with where Biddle had her transplant) and she told us not to leave until the lab called her with the results. Anyone who knows anything about these places realizes that you are sitting there with a 25 sick children who are running around playing with toys while they hack, cough, and sneeze all over everything in a 25 feet radius. Not so fun for a mother who has an immunosuppressed kid who already feels like shit. After a not so warm reception from one of the worker bees, we were told it was going to be a while. That's code for "you'll wait at least an hour while we attempt to get our paperwork together and leave you to sit with people who don't know how to control their children in public". Super.
Finally we were called back into the ultrasound room. The exam was uneventful and we were led to assume that appendicitis was not the cause of Biddle's illness. As I was sitting in the waiting room again I received a text from the Hubs, aka babydaddy. The pediatrician's office had called the house to let him know that the ultrasound did not show any appendicitis weirdness. Now mind you, the pediatrician had told me we had to wait until someone from the lab called her with the results before we were allowed to leave. (Although the doc had not been officially called, the pediatrician's office had seen the results online through their interoffice intraweb. Lovely.) When the worker bee finally called me over to the counter to let me know she was calling the doc, I told her I knew the ultrasound was clear. She looked at me like I had two heads and demanded to know how I knew that. I told her what the hubs told me and she just shook her head. "Well, if they were going to call you guys with results, what do we have to call the doctor for?" I had no answer for that but waited while she made the call. I then asked about labs and they told me they hadn't received orders for anything other than an ultrasound. By that point we had been at the lab for well over 2 hours and I was ready to go home, as was Biddle. But then they found the order and told me that more labs had been ordered by Biddle's liver docs in Cincy. Odd, because I had also been keeping them aware of the situation but they had not told me they were adding labs, just that they wanted the results of what the pediatrician had already ordered.
After the phlebotomist stuck Biddle twice before she managed to take the blood, we were sent home. Biddle seemed in slightly better spirits, so I decided to go to class after I dropped her off. It was the first meeting in my Tuesday night class and I really wanted to go although I was going to be an hour late. I made it to class (I'm so glad I went, it'll be a great class) and then started driving home around 8pm. On the way, I again talked to one of Biddle's liver doctors to give him an update, as neither the lab nor the pediatrician had bothered to call him with any results. At the same time, someone from the pediatricians office called the house and told the hubs to get Biddle to the ER immediately. He knew enough to ask about lab results and called me. In yet another phone call to Cincy liver doctors, I relayed what the hubs told me. The liver doctor said he would attempt to get all the results from the lab (they are automatically supposed to send all results to Cincy, but someone had neglected to do so) and then call me back. By the time I got a call back I was at home. He gave me lab results and said that Biddle most likely was fighting off a virus. She didn't need to go to the ER and btw, her liver numbers looked great.
Today, Biddle bounced out of bed and has been almost back to normal - full of p&v. Per the request of the liver doc I talked to last night, I called to update our transplant coordinator. End of story, or so I thought. However, later in the afternoon someone from the pediatrician's office called me to let me know we were expected at the ER last night and we had not shown up. When I explained that I had gotten a second opinion via Biddle's liver doctors and it was decided by them that a trip to the ER was unnecessary, she seemed offended. Oops, I'm an involved and informed parent who knows her child. Deal with it.
I believe all this stress has added some gray hairs to my head, but lucky for me I get re-blonded every six weeks so I don't have to see evidence of them. And today I made up for the lost time and attempted to get caught up on my reading assignments - between loads of laundry. Oh the life of a mom....
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