The Emergency Room

I knew it would come, I just hoped that it not be so soon. On Saturday, Jack came down with what turned out to be a bad cold, but had the symptoms of congestion coming out of the eyes, 103 degree temperatures, a broken blood vessel in the eye and horrendous cold symptoms and then, for added effect, went lethargic on us around 6 pm on a Saturday. Repeated calls to an idiot stand-in pediatrician (who did turn out to be right) provided no assurance (he insisted it was a cold), so we called our new friend and new doctor as it turns out, who advised a visit to urgent care at Children's. With a sitter on the way because we had planned to go out on Saturday, we waited for her to stay with the girls and over to St. Louis we went.

The urgent care center at Children's was closed, so all patients were referred to the emergency room, where there was a 4 1/2 hour wait. Not to mention that it was a study in utter chaos, picture 100 kids on 100 parental laps, all coughing, sneezing or holding a basin in front of them. It looked like the sick room in pre-war Ellis Island. Not people able to wait 4 1/2 hours, we were referred to Missouri Baptist (another 30 minutes away) or Cardinal Glennon, the smaller children's hospital in town and about 10 minutes away. (Did you know that emergency rooms aren't allowed to give out wait times? I get why, but how about a ballpark? Awful). Anyway, the person answering at CG said that things were moving pretty well and she was right. We made it into triage about 15 minutes after arrival, assisted by the fact that Jack's eyes were now encrusted shut and swollen. With 103.5 temperature, we had a high dose of Tylenol and a popsicle tout suite! The staff were fabulous and fast, I am an official fan. A chest x-ray and evaluations by two doctors and we were on our way, with a sheet on dealing with upper respiratory viruses at home. (Wash hands, take Tylenol, wait for it to run its course. Overachievers will include saline nose drops and a humidifier.) As for the eyes, apparently a cold can spread to the eyes, hence the congestion (it's not pink eye) and he coughed so hard, he burst a blood vessel in his upper eye, which is giving him the Dracula effect. So, that was Saturday.

Sunday we split the family and J stayed in the basement with the twinnies and stayed upstairs with Jack and watched Dora the Explorer. I hate Dora. We had a brief sojourn into Handy Manny, who is more tolerable, but in our illness, we reverted back to Dora. She's apparently like comfort food.

So, now we are waiting for the virus to spread through the family unit. I believe that all of these illnesses are coming from Jack's Mother's Day Out program, which I think he has to quit. With such little twins at home, we just can't go through this every other week. Well, I just can't go through this every other week. He starts preschool in the fall, which will have the same effect, but the twins will be 8 months old by then and a little stronger. All a little depressed around here, but this too shall pass. At least I am at home to weather these storms with the kids. No pictures this week as I can't find my camera AND our main computer's hard drive crashed, so I have to reload the camera software, etc.