The majority of my posts are written from the comfort of my bed. I am here to testify that writing from a box covered with a sheet and blanket hospital bed is just not the same.
A few posts ago I talked about my daughters surgery on April 21st. It had been a pretty uneventful recovery, although there was some swelling at the surgery site (the swelling that I was told was “normal” each time I called to ask about it). This past Tuesday she had a post-op checkup. The first thing the doctor said when he saw her incision was “this is really big. It shouldn’t be swollen like this.”
Which lead him into telling me the lab results that he has just gotten that morning. No cancer… GREAT NEWS! But when cultured, the lymph node had grown out an infection. A staph infection. A potentially life threatening staph infection called MRSA (Multi-drug Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus). A “I fucking kill people… babies, kids, adults” staph infection.
To read about my new nemesis, visit this link. My most favorite lines from these articles are like this one: MRSA infections are responsible for more deaths in the U.S. each year than AIDS. Or the one that states that of the 95,000 people hospitalized with MRSA, over 19,000 of them die. Wow… that gives me warm fuzzies all over my body.
Emma started a course of a powerful oral anti-biotic on Tuesday. By Wednesday the swelling continued to get worse, and by 7 p.m. we were at the hospital. It’s now Friday morning, and we still don’t know when we’re going to be able to go home.
Emma is on an i.v. anti-biotic called VANCOMYCIN. That in and of itself is fun, since she has a weird reaction to it called RED MAN SYNDROME… not dangerous, but agitating and sometimes painful :(.
But, for the first time since this shit storm started, when the doctors came in at the ass crack of dawn this morning, it looks like the infection might be getting better!! The lab results also show that the infection markers are coming down.
The past 4 days have pretty much sucked. I have gone through feeling like my daughter might die to wanting to die because of sleep deprivation. I’ve been in this hospital for 3 days, 2 nights, and I’m feeling a little cabin fever (she’s in isolation… she even has her own “Infectious Diseases” team. Woo Hoo!). But there is no way in hell that I’m leaving her.
At least she always wants me to sleep with her in her bed… it’s not great, but nothing in comparison to the chair/bed they have set up for parent sleeping. Torture doesn’t even begin to describe that contraption.
Besides wondering what is going to happen to my little girl, the hardest thing is not having ANY idea of when we’ll be able to go home. The doctors don’t even know. But this sign of improvement at least gives me some hope that sometime soon I’ll actually return home to the bed that I love.
So that’s been my fun filled week-soon-to-be-weekend. I can truly say that I feel lucky to live in a place that has great medical care and for health insurance!
Emma has truly been a trooper. Her spirits are high and she has charmed all of the staff with her cute personality.
Notice the crooked (but still very cute) smile. She has temporary (it better be!)
partial paralysis because the swelling is pressing on a nerve.