Ok so I haven't been here in a while...
Let me catch you up...
You may remember me posting about my crazy busy week, and all of the appointments that we had... blah blah blah. That was Thursday night. By Friday night I was in an Infant Transport Team Ambulance with Ola on our way to BC Children's hospital.
I could draw this out, and I know when I would have a moment when all of this was happening I was thinking I need to blog about this or that, but I will just give you a shortened version.
On Friday afternoon (1pm) I was ready to give Ola a bottle so I wanted to change her diaper. Poppy came to the couch too, and there it was... a bloody, poopy diaper. Now when I say blood, I mean BLOOD! red, fresh, raw, bleeding, blood. Lots of it. Scary amounts of it. I panicked. I saw blood trickling, I saw a huge clot type thing poking out. I got a new diaper on, Mark called the pediatrician, I started crying, Poppy started crying and I flew out the door to the hospital with Ola an her bloody diaper.
I waited at the hospital emergency for what seemed like an eternity. I think it was really about an hour and a half, and I think we would have waited longer if it weren't for a ER doctor that noticed how pale Ola was looking. I told her what the situation was, and whammo, Ola was in just like that. I heard the triage nurse trying to cover her ass by saying Ola was fine when she saw her. Yada Yada. I told the doctor I told her she was bleeding. In high-insight I wish I would have whipped off her diaper to let her see, maybe that would have helped me convey what the hell was going on.
Long story short, they took blood 3 times, I changed her diaper three more times, she began to vomit horrid, putrid, smelly green nastiness, they put in a ng tube, (to drain her stomach, instead of her vomiting) when Mark was able to meet me at the hospital later he asked for us to be transferred to Children's after a nurse decided to do a rectal temperature on a child with a suspected rectal prolapse. Even after I told her not to do it.
At 11 pm the infant transport team came, we drove quickly with lights and sirens. Mark was so scared following us when they put the lights on. I had to use the ambulance phone to tell him to slow down.
When we got to children's the process started over. Quickly this time, there was finally some urgency in her care. While we were down in their ER, the protrusion showed itself and we went from not knowing what was going on, to thinking she had a rectal prolapse. The rectal prolapse didn't explain the vomiting though.
We were admitted, and the following morning she had an ultrasound which determined she had what is called Intussuseption. This basically means that the small and large intestine kind of telescope back on themselves. Ola had a severe case. Her small intestine completely folded over itself, pushed it's way all the way through her large intestine and out her rectum. It wasn't a prolapsed rectum I was seeing it was her small intestine.
They use an air enema guided by moving x-ray to correct this. As long as they don't perforate her bowel with the pressure, and it can be pushed all the way back surgery wasn't necessary. I won't even go into what it was like to be there with her while they pushed a tube up her bottom while she screamed and twisted. All in all we ended up doing this 4 times over the 5 days we were there. It couldn't be completely reversed the first try, so we waited 3 hours and went back. It worked, and then relapsed 8 hours later. The third try worked almost immediately and then 26 hours later we were back for the 4th try when symptoms came back. The fourth try didn't show any block, just inflammation.
Our poor little one was so exhausted she slept all night, and we were released the next day after she was back to her normal self. It was really hard to not see her smile for 4 days. as soon as she was smiling I knew she was feeling better.
I had to call the hospital that night after we got home. She started crying and got rigid, turns out she just had to fart really bad, but still. She had a tiny blood streak in a diaper about 5 days ago, but other than that she seems to be on the mend.
I have no idea how parents deal with their children being in the hospital for extended amounts of time. By the end Mark and I were starting to get snippy snappy, I felt gross for a lack of clean clothes and decent food, and I missed Poppy.
I appreciate what Children's did for us. I appreciate their sense of urgency, and I appreciate them letting us be part of her treatment and healing.
but, I meant it when I told the nurse that we hope to not meet again. :)
