Tales from the ER

Silvio woke up Friday morning with a fever. He was terribly miserable so I immediately called the doctor and made an appointment for that morning. He was quickly diagnosed with Hand, Foot, Mouth Disease once the doctor saw the horrible sores in his mouth. I knew about this weird virus because Sofia had it a few months ago. She also had sores in her mouth and did not want to eat or drink much for a few days. Other than that, she was fairly happy and healthy. Silvio, on the other hand, was a fussy mess. I could not get him to drink anything. As the day and night passed, he was not any better, even with around the clock Motrin. By Saturday afternoon, I began to get worried. He had had about 4 ounces in 24 hours and had only two barely wet diapers. Not a good sign. I decided to call the Urgent Care Clinic and she advised me to go in. At 8:00 pm on a warm Saturday night, I was pacing back in forth in a patient room with a very sad Silvio. The doctor noticed how miserable he was and began to check him. Once he looked in his ear, he diagnosed him with a bilateral ear infection. So this poor child not only had a mouth full of sores, but both of his ears were terribly infected. Well, it was no wonder he was not eating. The doctor went on to tell me how serious this is and that we were to force him to drink a teaspoon of Pedialyte every ten minutes all night. He told me that if he had had a fever, he would have sent us immediately to the ER. Okay, now I am somewhat in panic mode. We rushed to pharmacy to fill a prescription for the antibiotic and went home. Silvio was exhausted and feel asleep as soon as we got home. We let him sleep for a half hour and then woke him for his teaspoon of fluid. This was going to be awful. I began to worry. Brian and I then decided that is we were going to do this crazy regime all night, then we might as well be in the ER. It was then decided that I should just take him in. I packed a few things and tranferred a tired and weak Silvio to his carseat and off we went.
We got to the ER at 10:45 and registered. I noticed the room full of people, but thought that maybe we would be see within an hour. An hour passed and then another, and I began to panic. The group of drunk people began to annoy me. A few of them were there because a girl was bitten by a rat. They had killed the rat and had it in a clear plastic bag. Gross. Not only were they parading the rat around the ER waiting room, they would not stop making jokes about the rat, none of which were remotely funny. Some of the other folks were there because a guy cut his toes open. They were cracking jokes about discount pedicures. Again, they were not funny. All of this people were chatting loudly for over two hours. Needless to say, I found none of it amusing. Rather I found their loud conversation to be utterly obnoxious in a room full of people waiting to see a doctor. They even joked about going in before us, and I about lost it. I had a sick baby who would sleep for a few minutes and then suddenly would wake up screaming. Do you think they could have had some respect? None. Anyway, they only made this whole experience even harder than it already was. At one point, I broke down crying to Brian about how terrible our health care system is. I was a mess.
Finally after two and a half hours, they called us in so that we could wait another half hour to see the doctor. After looking at him for a minute, she tried to convince me that we should feed him. Yeah right. I had been trying to feed him for over a day and she thought that he was going to eat in this crazy place at 3:00 AM. After a moment of shoving a bottle in his mouth, she agreed to give him IV fluids. A nurse came in a few minutes later to start the IV. I asked him sternly if he had done many of these on babies. "Of course" he said firmly. Well, I was not about to let any amateur go poking around my chubby little babies arms. So it is incredibly difficult to even see a vein in Silvio's chubby arms and legs. My heart was racing. How was this gong to work? He finally found a vein in his foot and he went for it. I held Silvio's arms so that he would not flail. He looked at me intently and screamed bloody murder as if saying "how could you do this to me?" My heart was breaking into a million pieces. I want to protect him from all of this; from every bit of pain in this world. I guess that is part of being a mother- having this fundamental desire to keep your child from experiencing any pain. To make it worse, he could not find the vein after poking around and had to try the other foot. He finally found a vein and I breathed a sigh of relief. Silvio calmed down qiuckly and fell back to sleep. I layed down next to him and we napped for a while. It was so sweet to snuggle with the Nug. I was brought back to his birth and our first moments together. I reveled every second of that hour, taking in his sweet smell and rubbing his soft belly. Although it was so sweet to have this snuggle time, I wanted it under other circumstances. I just wanted to get through this. At about 5:00 AM, the doctor came in and took out the IV and told us we could go home. I gathered our things and we were home by 6AM. Silvio went straight to sleep since his poor body was exhausted from the long and grueling night. I was too. I went to bed and about 2 minutes later, I heard Luca's footsteps down the hall. Oh, the life of a mom.
After a few hours of rest, we still felt like Silvio was not himself. We hadn't seen him smile for days and he was beginning to look a bit listless. I called the advice line yet again, and she recommended that we head back to the ER. This time Brian came with me and we were seen within 20 minutes. He was cleared to go home with some new advice for medication. Later that afternoon, he took a bottle of formula and I had tears. I was so happy to see him on the road to recovery. I was so deeply worried about him. I felt like I was in crisis mode for a few days. All of my energy was focused on taking care of my baby. The Nug is about 95% himself as of today. He is smiling and babbling. I feel so incredibly grateful that he is better. Each smile just brings me an overwhelming amount of joy. It was only a few days of a very sick Silvio, but it was so intense. I thought of all of the parents of very sick children whose hearts must ache. I feel like this experience has deepened my understanding of being a mother. I have never felt such deep concern and such an intense desire to shield another being from any suffering. At the same time, I felt empowered by such great love. My children are only teaching me to love more fiercely and more deeply. These little beings come into our to only to change us in such dramatic ways and to help us understand the purity of joy and the depth of love. I'm not saying being a mother is easy in any way, but it sure is amazing. Thank you Sofia, Luca, and Silvio.