Isn't This More Fun Than A Barrel of Monkeys?
Speaking of which, a barrel of monkeys sounds AWFUL. Horrible, smelly, covered in feces and urine... worst barrel ever, really, stay far away from that barrel.
And speaking of barrels of urine, let me tell you a story. By barrel, I mean hospital, and by urine I mean, well, actually I mean urine.
This should be fun, huh? Doesn't it sound fun already?
Let's proceed into my world of urological wonders, one that I've been spending a ridiculous amount of time in over the past month.
It all started when Monkey was about three and a half weeks old (he's seven weeks now)... Hubby and I were sitting in the living room, watching TV, recovering from an evening of entertaining the in-laws. Monkey was on my lap, or on the Boppy really, but sitting on me and I had a blanket over him. Everything was hunkydory, except we had been thinking all day that Monkey was perhaps constipated, because he was making this straining face, followed by a cry right before we noticed his diapers were wet.
We typically notice those things pretty fast, especially since the newborn diapers have an indicator strip on them that let you know when they are wet. So, we generally catch a wet diaper pretty quick.
Everything else seemed fine, that night, we were getting ready for bed, I was changing him, and I noticed he was pretty red in the face and ROASTING. For those of you who have kids, you know what I mean, and for those that don't, when a baby has a fever, they are VERY VERY hot to the touch. They always feel warm in general, but a fever feels significantly hotter.
I take his temp with our forehead thermometer, and it comes back at 101.1. Oh shit. That's high. I take it like 50 more times (I'm not overly impressed with the forehead thermometer btw), and though I'm getting variations, I'm getting nothing under 100.6. They tell you right away on almost every piece of literature, in person, the local skywriter writes it in the sky, it's tatooed on the local jaunty hobos, that anything over 100.4 is considered a fever, and to take a baby under one month old immediately to the ER with anything over 100.4.
So, we pile into the car, I'm in my PJs (which being shorts and a t-shirt is not good ER clothing, since hospitals are always so damned cold), and we rush to the ER.
By the time we get there, Monkey's temp was normal. But they wanted us to wait 45 mins before the discharged, taking his temp one more time before we go. Before the pediatrician walked away to let us stew for 45 minutes, he told us that were this a real fever, they take it extremely seriously in a baby this young. The automatically admit them, start them on IV antibiotics and draw blood, urine and spinal fluid. Yes, Ma'am, we're talking a spinal tap.
But of course, he's thinking it's nothing, Monkey was probably just overheated, I had said over and over and over that I had him bundled up 6 ways to Sunday (which is totally true) and holding him.
So yeah, it's nothing, right?
We take his temp again: 101.3.
Shit.
No, no... really... SHIT.
The next thing I know, I'm being piled into an ambulance and rushed to the big, serious, no joke hospital. We were at the shits and giggles hospital before. Seriously though, it was the much, much smaller,quaint "neighborhood" hospital, not the big mammajamma "you're in the real deep shit now" downtown hospital.
It was very surreal. I kept having this running dialogue in my head for the next hour or so which went something like this:
"Man, this ambulance is really messy, you'd think they'd keep it tidier. Wow, this is where they take sick people. You guys sure are talking to me like we're all staying here or something. Huh, Dr. McHandsome sure is talking like we're going to be here for a while."
I get wheeled in, and wheeled up to the Specialty Pediatrics ward, (yeah, that was weird), they load me off the gurney, and they escort us into a room. The very, very nice nurse shows us around the room, where the bathroom is, how the shower works, how the TV works, asks if we need to feed Monkey, fetches is a bazillion little things of formula and a package diapers.
And that's when it really hit me. We're staying here.
The pediatrician comes in, whom I shall call Dr. McHandsome, and runs though what is about to happen. Just like the other pede said, blood, urine, spinal tap. They whisk Monkey away, and hubby and I are left there to wait, and for me to freak the hell out.
Monkey comes back, sleeping and has been outfitted with an IV for his antibiotic administration.
Which they do right away.
Monkey apparently FELL ASLEEP during the spinal tap. Yeah. He's a rockstar. Shit, this probably means that when he's a teenager he will get tons of piercings and crap because he's "okay with pain."
Anyway, the pediatrician comes in (I am going to abbreviate pediatrician as pede from now on, it's just shorter and easier)and talks to us how well Monkey did, and that they can almost certainly rule out meningitis, his spinal fluid looked good and clear. However, his urine was cloudy, so 95% sure it's a UTI.
Dr. McHandsome then talks to us about how long we will be there. This was very early Thursday morning. He said we would be there till Saturday at the EARLIEST. More likely Monday or Tuesday.
Holy fuck, batman...
As it turns out, infections of any kind in a less-than-one month old are incredibly serious. They take the "kill a housefly with a cannon" approach and treat it very aggressively, assuming the worst, hoping for the best. Now, I've had UTIs before, so I was surprised at this level of aggressiveness. But what I didn't know was that in an infant, a UTI and a kidney infection are the same thing, you never have one without the other, simply because of geography. The distance that the bacteria has to travel from the urinary tract to the bladder to the kidney in an adult is pretty far, so it takes a while. In an infant, there is almost no distance at all, so the bacteria become pervasive, very, very fast. Which also is a quick hop skip and a jump to toxemia a.k.a. bacteria in his blood, THAT is a whole different kettle of fish, and goes from "not good" to "really, really bad" in a hurry.
The main thing was to stabilize him, and get him full of antibiotics. One thing that Monkey really had in his favor is that besides the fever, he wasn't outwardly ill. He wasn't overly fussy or lethargic, and he visibly looked and sounded really good. So they were optimistic that it was very early as far as the infection goes.
Hubby and I settle in, and realize we need to go get clothes, toothbrush, you know, all the stuff you need when you're camping out in a hospital room.
The first night was pretty horrible. First of all, I was emotionally a disaster area, and I was FREEZING because the room was at meat-locker setting, and I was in my shorts/tshirt PJS. I didn't even have socks on. So I was pretty miserable. Hubby went home to try to get a little sleep, and I stayed there.
The next four days were all the same. Rinse, repeat of the following schedule: we hang out, take care of Monkey, talk to the nurses, they do the IV thing, we feed him, we take a shower, we meet with the pedes once a day. They ran cultures of his blood, it came back for sure as a kidney infection with a fine vintage of E-Coli running around in there. But as far as the infection went right now, it was definitely responding, he was doing well, no fevers, and we even got one of his first smiles from him... Right there in the hospital. What a little trooper.
Once the nature of the infection was determined and he was stable, we had to wait to find out if we could get what is known as a VCUG on Monkey. That's a test that determines if he has a form of reflux in his kidney. What that means is the same concept as acid reflux in the stomach, when stomach acid goes the wrong way back up the esophagus. Kidney reflux is when urine goes back up from the bladder, back into the kidneys.
This is relatively minor condition, and in babies typically clears up with age. But it needs to be treated long-term, essentially until it goes away.
Monday morning rolls around, and we go from "sit and wait" to "GO GO GO" in about three seconds. The people for the VCUG show up, he gets tested, it's determined that he does indeed have a very minor case of reflux, then it was all talk of discharging us, which was then dependent on us being able to get a PICC line put in to Monkey. A PICC line is an IV you can go home with, and Hubby and I would administer his IV at antibiotic at home. If they couldn't do that, then we'd be in the hospital for another 9-14 days. So, as ooged out as I was at the prospect of maintaining and administering an IV to Monkey at home, I was REALLY rooting for the go home option.
More waiting. Apparently only certain NICU nurses are trained in putting in a PICC line.
Then all of a sudden, they had found a nurse who could do it, she comes in, they get the line in, and the next thing we know we're being trained on how to do this all of this stuff at home. How to give our son antibiotics through the IV that doesn't just go into his vein, it goes almost all the way to his heart.
Yeah. Ooogy.
And then we're in the car, going home, with the baby complete with his new iPod hookup, or his USB port as I would lovingly call it.
There is more to this story, but I'm going to stop for now and reflect on this. I don't think that I ever felt like a worse parent than those first two nights in the hospital. There is no way to not feel like this is somehow your fault, especially knowing that in adults, you generally get a UTI because of things that have to do with hygiene, things like that. So, I couldn't help but feel like we had somehow brought this on ourselves.
Also, we had made the decision to not circumcise Monkey when he was born. This quickly felt like the worst decision that we had made, because everyone naturally thinks that it has everything to do with it. As it turns out, it has very little to do with it, because of the reflux he is far, FAR more predisposed to this infection, and in a baby this young, the foreskin is really a non-issue. We were reassured a thousand times over that the circumcision thing had very little to do with it.
I had to really come to grips with this unending feeling that I was a total shit parent.
Once we got the diagnosis of reflux, I really let it go, the feeling of being a horrible, horrible parent, that there is a condition that made this happen, not me doing something wrong.
There is more to this story, it's a second installment, the second chapter, which will be called "Being Ahead By A Head", or "Things I'd REALLY Like To Not Think About"...
You'll soon see why.
And speaking of barrels of urine, let me tell you a story. By barrel, I mean hospital, and by urine I mean, well, actually I mean urine.
This should be fun, huh? Doesn't it sound fun already?
Let's proceed into my world of urological wonders, one that I've been spending a ridiculous amount of time in over the past month.
It all started when Monkey was about three and a half weeks old (he's seven weeks now)... Hubby and I were sitting in the living room, watching TV, recovering from an evening of entertaining the in-laws. Monkey was on my lap, or on the Boppy really, but sitting on me and I had a blanket over him. Everything was hunkydory, except we had been thinking all day that Monkey was perhaps constipated, because he was making this straining face, followed by a cry right before we noticed his diapers were wet.
We typically notice those things pretty fast, especially since the newborn diapers have an indicator strip on them that let you know when they are wet. So, we generally catch a wet diaper pretty quick.
Everything else seemed fine, that night, we were getting ready for bed, I was changing him, and I noticed he was pretty red in the face and ROASTING. For those of you who have kids, you know what I mean, and for those that don't, when a baby has a fever, they are VERY VERY hot to the touch. They always feel warm in general, but a fever feels significantly hotter.
I take his temp with our forehead thermometer, and it comes back at 101.1. Oh shit. That's high. I take it like 50 more times (I'm not overly impressed with the forehead thermometer btw), and though I'm getting variations, I'm getting nothing under 100.6. They tell you right away on almost every piece of literature, in person, the local skywriter writes it in the sky, it's tatooed on the local jaunty hobos, that anything over 100.4 is considered a fever, and to take a baby under one month old immediately to the ER with anything over 100.4.
So, we pile into the car, I'm in my PJs (which being shorts and a t-shirt is not good ER clothing, since hospitals are always so damned cold), and we rush to the ER.
By the time we get there, Monkey's temp was normal. But they wanted us to wait 45 mins before the discharged, taking his temp one more time before we go. Before the pediatrician walked away to let us stew for 45 minutes, he told us that were this a real fever, they take it extremely seriously in a baby this young. The automatically admit them, start them on IV antibiotics and draw blood, urine and spinal fluid. Yes, Ma'am, we're talking a spinal tap.
But of course, he's thinking it's nothing, Monkey was probably just overheated, I had said over and over and over that I had him bundled up 6 ways to Sunday (which is totally true) and holding him.
So yeah, it's nothing, right?
We take his temp again: 101.3.
Shit.
No, no... really... SHIT.
The next thing I know, I'm being piled into an ambulance and rushed to the big, serious, no joke hospital. We were at the shits and giggles hospital before. Seriously though, it was the much, much smaller,quaint "neighborhood" hospital, not the big mammajamma "you're in the real deep shit now" downtown hospital.
It was very surreal. I kept having this running dialogue in my head for the next hour or so which went something like this:
"Man, this ambulance is really messy, you'd think they'd keep it tidier. Wow, this is where they take sick people. You guys sure are talking to me like we're all staying here or something. Huh, Dr. McHandsome sure is talking like we're going to be here for a while."
I get wheeled in, and wheeled up to the Specialty Pediatrics ward, (yeah, that was weird), they load me off the gurney, and they escort us into a room. The very, very nice nurse shows us around the room, where the bathroom is, how the shower works, how the TV works, asks if we need to feed Monkey, fetches is a bazillion little things of formula and a package diapers.
And that's when it really hit me. We're staying here.
The pediatrician comes in, whom I shall call Dr. McHandsome, and runs though what is about to happen. Just like the other pede said, blood, urine, spinal tap. They whisk Monkey away, and hubby and I are left there to wait, and for me to freak the hell out.
Monkey comes back, sleeping and has been outfitted with an IV for his antibiotic administration.
Which they do right away.
Monkey apparently FELL ASLEEP during the spinal tap. Yeah. He's a rockstar. Shit, this probably means that when he's a teenager he will get tons of piercings and crap because he's "okay with pain."
Anyway, the pediatrician comes in (I am going to abbreviate pediatrician as pede from now on, it's just shorter and easier)and talks to us how well Monkey did, and that they can almost certainly rule out meningitis, his spinal fluid looked good and clear. However, his urine was cloudy, so 95% sure it's a UTI.
Dr. McHandsome then talks to us about how long we will be there. This was very early Thursday morning. He said we would be there till Saturday at the EARLIEST. More likely Monday or Tuesday.
Holy fuck, batman...
As it turns out, infections of any kind in a less-than-one month old are incredibly serious. They take the "kill a housefly with a cannon" approach and treat it very aggressively, assuming the worst, hoping for the best. Now, I've had UTIs before, so I was surprised at this level of aggressiveness. But what I didn't know was that in an infant, a UTI and a kidney infection are the same thing, you never have one without the other, simply because of geography. The distance that the bacteria has to travel from the urinary tract to the bladder to the kidney in an adult is pretty far, so it takes a while. In an infant, there is almost no distance at all, so the bacteria become pervasive, very, very fast. Which also is a quick hop skip and a jump to toxemia a.k.a. bacteria in his blood, THAT is a whole different kettle of fish, and goes from "not good" to "really, really bad" in a hurry.
The main thing was to stabilize him, and get him full of antibiotics. One thing that Monkey really had in his favor is that besides the fever, he wasn't outwardly ill. He wasn't overly fussy or lethargic, and he visibly looked and sounded really good. So they were optimistic that it was very early as far as the infection goes.
Hubby and I settle in, and realize we need to go get clothes, toothbrush, you know, all the stuff you need when you're camping out in a hospital room.
The first night was pretty horrible. First of all, I was emotionally a disaster area, and I was FREEZING because the room was at meat-locker setting, and I was in my shorts/tshirt PJS. I didn't even have socks on. So I was pretty miserable. Hubby went home to try to get a little sleep, and I stayed there.
The next four days were all the same. Rinse, repeat of the following schedule: we hang out, take care of Monkey, talk to the nurses, they do the IV thing, we feed him, we take a shower, we meet with the pedes once a day. They ran cultures of his blood, it came back for sure as a kidney infection with a fine vintage of E-Coli running around in there. But as far as the infection went right now, it was definitely responding, he was doing well, no fevers, and we even got one of his first smiles from him... Right there in the hospital. What a little trooper.
Once the nature of the infection was determined and he was stable, we had to wait to find out if we could get what is known as a VCUG on Monkey. That's a test that determines if he has a form of reflux in his kidney. What that means is the same concept as acid reflux in the stomach, when stomach acid goes the wrong way back up the esophagus. Kidney reflux is when urine goes back up from the bladder, back into the kidneys.
This is relatively minor condition, and in babies typically clears up with age. But it needs to be treated long-term, essentially until it goes away.
Monday morning rolls around, and we go from "sit and wait" to "GO GO GO" in about three seconds. The people for the VCUG show up, he gets tested, it's determined that he does indeed have a very minor case of reflux, then it was all talk of discharging us, which was then dependent on us being able to get a PICC line put in to Monkey. A PICC line is an IV you can go home with, and Hubby and I would administer his IV at antibiotic at home. If they couldn't do that, then we'd be in the hospital for another 9-14 days. So, as ooged out as I was at the prospect of maintaining and administering an IV to Monkey at home, I was REALLY rooting for the go home option.
More waiting. Apparently only certain NICU nurses are trained in putting in a PICC line.
Then all of a sudden, they had found a nurse who could do it, she comes in, they get the line in, and the next thing we know we're being trained on how to do this all of this stuff at home. How to give our son antibiotics through the IV that doesn't just go into his vein, it goes almost all the way to his heart.
Yeah. Ooogy.
And then we're in the car, going home, with the baby complete with his new iPod hookup, or his USB port as I would lovingly call it.
There is more to this story, but I'm going to stop for now and reflect on this. I don't think that I ever felt like a worse parent than those first two nights in the hospital. There is no way to not feel like this is somehow your fault, especially knowing that in adults, you generally get a UTI because of things that have to do with hygiene, things like that. So, I couldn't help but feel like we had somehow brought this on ourselves.
Also, we had made the decision to not circumcise Monkey when he was born. This quickly felt like the worst decision that we had made, because everyone naturally thinks that it has everything to do with it. As it turns out, it has very little to do with it, because of the reflux he is far, FAR more predisposed to this infection, and in a baby this young, the foreskin is really a non-issue. We were reassured a thousand times over that the circumcision thing had very little to do with it.
I had to really come to grips with this unending feeling that I was a total shit parent.
Once we got the diagnosis of reflux, I really let it go, the feeling of being a horrible, horrible parent, that there is a condition that made this happen, not me doing something wrong.
There is more to this story, it's a second installment, the second chapter, which will be called "Being Ahead By A Head", or "Things I'd REALLY Like To Not Think About"...
You'll soon see why.
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