Duncan seemed to be doing better, his fever seemed to be down and he was busy playing and such, but during dinner his Tylenol must've worn off... he started looking flush and wasn't eating anything. I checked his temp and it was 103 across the forehead and decided to check him rectally to make sure, which was 102.7 - and it was obvious he wasn't feeling well when he didn't put up a fuss and didn't seem to mind having his temp taken that way! We called the hospital and they said to bring him in.
I knew that the hospital was pretty small, my Dr's office is in a clinic connected to the hospital. There was only one other person waiting in the ER. But when we were on the way there about 5 emergency vehicles passed us - police, fire and an ambulance... so of course by the time we got all checked in and everything they were bringing in someone from a car accident. We got there probably around 6:15 or so. We filled out the paperwork and had to wait maybe 10 minutes before the nurse came to get us and said that she would check his vitals, then would send us back to the waiting room because it may take a while with the car accident coming in.
Right after the nurse checked most of his vitals and was running around trying to find a smaller finger thing to get his pulse and heart rate, a big storm blew in and the power went out (for all of about 30 seconds, but seemed like forever) - all the computers went down... luckily when they came back up they still had his info. His fever was back down because the Tylenol we gave him before we left had kicked in, so we were thinking that if it was going to take a while we would just take him to his Dr in the morning... but the nurse went ahead and took us back to the ER.
It was the absolute smallest ER I've ever seen! I think they had 3 or 4 curtained rooms all crammed into a really small spot... probably the size of 1 or 2 normal hospital rooms! And it was horribly hot in there! We could hear the lady from the car accident give her statement, heard her insurance claim number... luckily she wasn't really injured, just had lots of glass on her hands and in her hair. She was on her way home from exercise class and her eyes left the road for a moment while she put her ipod in her bag...
Anyway, of course it took forever in the ER... and they just didn't do a good job of cleaning - there was dried blood on the floor! So we were all afraid to touch anything! The Dr finally came to check him out and saw that his throat was red, so did a throat culture - man did that make Duncan mad!! He just hates anyone messing with his mouth! It's always a major ordeal when I check him for incoming teeth! He amazingly tolerated everything else, didn't fuss for the armpit temp, barely even noticed the prick on his finger to draw blood to check his white cell count... I would have thought he would have thrown a fit at the prick on the finger and 5 minutes of squeezing it to get enough blood... but he just didn't care. By that time we were all sweating our butts off and his fever was started to creep back (probably because it was so damn hot!). They gave him some Motrin... I think we had to wait until about 8pm for the throat culture and blood labs to come back - the lab was all backed up due to the power outage and computers going down... but everything checked out OK - but since his throat and ears looked a little red the Dr wanted to give him an antibiotic.
We finally got out of there around 8:30 - then had to stop at the store to pick up some more Tylenol and some ibuprofen... so we didn't get home until a little after 9:30... then discovered that we'd locked ourselves out of the house! Long story... long night... luckily we left in such a hurry that we forgot to take the fan out of the porch window, so managed to get in through that window...
I have to say that I really do not like that hospital. It just seems too small for the population that they serve (especially considering that the population doubles during the summer with all the vacationers). I just really hope that their labor and delivery rooms are much better than the ER!! But amazingly, they do have pretty much the latest technology - they had the touch screen computers, which is one thing in their favor... and they actually have the 3D ultrasounds.
Anyway, so that's the long story that was our night last night.... things have calmed down today and Duncan seems to be feeling a little better - actually ate a fruit bar for breakfast :) we'll see how he eats lunch! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment