Lilyana and the Emergency Room

Okay, before anybody gets too worked, let me explain the title a little.  For the past three days, Lily has been running a fever. However, she had maintained a steady temperature of around 101° F (38° C). At about 6pm last night, after waking from an afternoon nap, we took her temperature and discovered that her temperature was now at a rather scary 103.5° F (40° C). Apparently, once the temperature starts get up to around 104° F – 105° F (40° C – 41° F), you’re getting in to seizure territory, which is dangerous enough for adults. When you start talking about infants having seizures, you’re talking serious risk of permanent brain damage. So we naturally made a couple of phone calls to Jaime, Jennifer’s sister,  Cindy, Jennifer’s mother (and a Registered Nurse at Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH) Hospital) and Alison, Jennifer’s best friend (and the local WIC co-ordinator at the Health Department).  After hearing pretty much the same thing from all three of them (“Take her to the Emergency Room! She might have Swine Flu!”), we bundled up our ailing daughter and drove straight to the ARH Hospital Emergency Room.

Once we got there, things kinda happened pretty quickly to start with. We told the Nurse behind at the registration desk that she had been running a high fever for the past 30 minutes or so, he quickly ushered us through and took her temperature, which was now about 104.6° F (40° C). He asked us if we had given her any medication, to which we responded “Tylenol at about 6.10pm”. He told us to unwrap her from her blankets and remove her clothing. He then gave her a Tylenol suppository and packed an ice pack under each arm. By now we had been there for a little under a half hour.

This is where things start to REALLY slow down. The Dr on duty came and check her out and ordered bloods and fluids (urine) to be taken for tests.  The lab techs came down about an hour later to take some blood and they attached this little bag over her genitals to catch whatever pee might come out. After waiting for a further 90 minutes, the results of the bloods come back: all clear. Unfortunately, she still had nothing in her pee bag.

Since we had been there for three hours already, we decided to try and get her to drink something in the hopes that she might pee soon after that. Unfortunately, after being in a weird place with a whole lot of unfamiliar people around who had jabbed her, shove something up her bum, packed her up with cold stuff and attached a plastic bag to her privates, she was in no mood to drink anything and was now panicking whenever she couldn’t see me or Jennifer at the same time, even if we only disappeared behind the other for a split second. So we asked if we could take her for a walk to the cafeteria so we could eat something and hopefully get her to drink a little, to which we were given the thumbs up.

So we get to the cafeteria and order some food and a little something to drink and sit down at a table with our poor baby who was wearing nothing but a diaper and was wrapped up a little in a blanket, since her temp was now down to a normal 99° F (37° C). As we were finishing up our “meal”, Cindy (who had come down a number of times while she was on duty in the Oncology ward, upstairs) decided to check the pee bag to see if we had had any luck in that department. That was when we realized that she had actually pee’d, but the bag attached to her privates had caught just a few drops and the diaper had soaked up the rest.

So we went straight back to the emergency room where the Dr on duty told us we could go home, but to keep a good eye on her and try to get her to a Doctor to day for a urinalysis.  As it turns out, she woke up perfectly fine today and hasn’t had a fever all day, for which we are eternally grateful.  We’re hoping she will continue like this over the next couple of days.

All in all, my first ER experience was a long, slow one. However, I have heard stories of people being kept in the ER for upwards of 10 hours, so we got off pretty light with a total stay of a little over 4.5 hours. I was impressed at how well things were handled, though thing could have been a little speedier, but again, we can’t complain too much. Relatively speaking, we were in and out.


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