Showing posts with label nurses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nurses. Show all posts

26 February 2013

the plague

well, we finally caught our fair share of the winter "blahs," and around here they are not to be taken lightly. what started with a headache, sore throat, and cough in my stepson continued on to my husband being laid up in bed with fever and not eating or drinking for a few days. after that madness ensued, I found myself pulling out oxygen tanks and supplies from the medical supply closet that I haven't needed to use for over a year for my son Rowan. but it didn't stop there. a few days later, after returning home from a dentist appointment to find him looking listless and tired but unable to sleep due to the work he was having to do just to breathe, I found myself setting up his ventilator (breathing machine) that has been in the closet for the past 4 months. let me tell you, that is NOT a good feeling. there were definitely some of mama's tears on those vent circuits that night.

since then, we've been back and forth to his lung doctors a few times, they tell us it is not RSV (the respiratory virus most dreaded by all preemie parents), and not the flu. but it IS a virus that tends to hang on for a few weeks and makes kids really sick. they offered to admit him to the hospital, but let me know that they wouldn't do anything differently there than what we are doing at home, provided he didn't get too dehydrated. well, it wasn't easy to keep fluids in him (despite the fact that I have direct access to his gut via the mic-key button), but I opted to try my best at home, because the hospital is just NOT a fun place (I always do my best to avoid it unless I'm getting paid to be there.) and I knew Rowan would get better faster at home. so despite our lack of home health nurses, we stuck it out in our living room. which means we have been giving IMC level hospital care to Rowan around the clock without any break until the home nurse shows up so we can sleep...and sometimes the home health nurse doesn't show up, and sometimes there wasn't one scheduled to begin with... so i guess it goes without saying I am one tired momma.

but i think it paid off, because today Rowan barely needed any oxygen at all, and I was even able to take him back off the vent for an hour or so at a time until he got tired and needed to be put back on. he was playful and talkative, and he even made a few little messes. I have never been so happy to see little toddler messes all over the play-room! he is also tolerating his food without gagging or wretching it up, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say I think he's turned the corner and is getting better. I have him back on the vent to sleep tonight so he can get some good rest, and then we'll see how tomorrow goes.

I am too tired to come up with a witty ending to this update, so I'll just say goodnight!

02 May 2012

they say we won't be given more than we can handle...

...but sometimes I wonder. especially when we get a letter from our landlord requesting that we vacate in two months. ACK! they want to sell the house by the end of the summer, and they want us out to do it. jerks.

dumb stupid jerks.

and mean!

mean, dumb, stupid jerks.

we weren't looking to stay in this place forever, but we definitely weren't looking to move out anytime soon, what with the 15+ boxes/month of medical supplies we receive a month, the home health nursing, the big heavy medical equipment, and so on and so forth. but we definitely won't miss the leaking ceilings, outdated kitchen, marshy backyard, flooding basement, leaning back deck, and GINORMOUS heating and cooling bills. while this place certainly isn't a dump, it's FAR from being a gem. so good luck to my landlords with unloading it in the next few months. makes me wonder if they're familiar with the terms FULL DISCLOSURE, but, hey, that's not my problem.

in other news, Rowan is coming off the vent for 7 hours a day now, increasing to 8 hours a day on Friday. we've been having a lot of fun taking him out to different places. so far he's been to the midtown scholar bookstore a few times, walking around and picnicking by the river, a sushi place, with me to get by TB skin test, back to the NICU for a visit with some of his nurses, a pizza shop, a clothing store, his gramma's house (of course), and a few other random places. and tonight he gets to go looking at a couple of houses with us! oh, the places you can go :)

tah tah for now, and wish us luck!

erin


28 November 2011

have a large day

instead of saying conventional things like "have a nice day," or "have a good day," my grandfather (pop-pop) would always say "have a large day." yeah, i come from good stock. and i am writing this blog because i have just had myself a rather large day. here are the details:

of course there was the usual, taking care of the baby (which involves trach-care, g-tube care, getting dressed, love, chest PT, equipment checks, emails to nursing agencies, formula mixing, love, emails to medical equipment supply companies, love, love, love, cold washcloths for his tooth that's coming through, love, walks through the neighborhood, bouncing, flying, love, bottle-feeding, tube-feeding, spoon-feeding, love, love, reading books, talking, joking, love, jumping, bath, more trach care, more g-tube care, changing trach-ties, love, changing into pee-jays,  more chest PT, love, medications all day long, talking to the home-health nurse, love, and i'm sure there's more that i'm leaving out but that's a pretty good depiction.

and then there was that dinner i cooked: chicken burritos. yum. i'm about to go make myself another one just because i brought up the subject. enough said.

board game. this was brought on inconspicuously by me and aaron laying on the couch, bored for maybe one minute. so i looked at him and said "wanna play a game?" so we ended up playing apples to apples. it is the kind of game where more is merrier, so we invited billy and rowan to play along. since it is a card game where you essentially pick a card, we just held the choices up in front of the baby and he got his chance to make a choice. he did that by either smiling at a card, trying to grab a card, or headbutting a card. he was a good little player and actually ended up WINNING the game! yay rowan! mommy couldn't be more proud :)

curling my hair. yeah you heard it first. i actually spent time on my looks. i am moving up in the world. rowan helped me put my hair in curlers and i must say it looks GOOD.

about ten tons of laundry.

kalhua. mi-mi (pop-pop's wife)'s recipe. passed down the generations to little old me. i made 24 pints this evening which are currently sitting in darkness for one month until they can be brought out and given away as christmas presents and consumed in people's living rooms as white russians. i have made kahlua for the past 5 or 7 years (not sure) save last year (due to the bedrest issue) according to mi-mi's recipe so that in itself is big for me.

pumped 6-7 times. also good.

watched the steeler's game. or at least payed a small amount of attention to the steeler's game while making kahlua in the kitchen.

listened to a "this american life" episode about penn state. i'm not penn state alumni or even a fan, but it made me shed a few tears.

i haven't really sat down and rested or reflected on my day until right now. i haven't had a chance. so i think that qualifies as a large day. maybe humongous, but i'm not trying to brag. we'll just call it large and leave it at that.

here's to hoping tomorrow's just as big :)

05 August 2011

saline and toilet paper dreams

i'm not entirely sure, but i think last night i might have had a dream about normal saline and toiliet paper.

                                                            

i don't think you'll find that one in the dream interpretation books. i think it is a reflection of how my life is being over-run by medical things. one reason i became a nurse was because i felt it was a job that you didn't have to take home with you. you clock in, do your shift, clock out, and leave. the rest is up to you. i guess the joke's on me! i never dreamed i would be running a mini-intensive care unit out of my living room with my son as the patient. but it's okay, i'll just be uber-medical-girl for a while until this is all behind us.

i cut back on our home-health nursing hours today, and BOY do i feel awesome about it. now the nurses will just basically be here when we need to sleep, and not while i'm awake and perfectly capable of taking care of Rowan all by my mommy self. i wish i would have done that a long time ago, but i didn't even know that i could. and i suppose it was nice to have some extra coverage while we adjusted to everything at home. but hopefully, with a little help from friends and family, we won't need all the nurses up in our face all the time and Rowan can go back to being a sweet little mommy's boy for a while :) ever since Rowan's been born there has been a nurse of one sort or another messing with him in some way or telling me and billy what to do with him. between the NICU nurses, the rehab nurses, and the home health nurses, the boy could definitely use a reduction in the RN factor in his life. and so can mom. when Rowan cries in the middle of a nap, i feel like i have to race a nurse to get to him first. when i want to hold him, i want to pick him up off wherever he happens to be sitting without someone hovering over me saying "do you need help?" i realize this may sound ungrateful and rude. i realize these people are just trying to do the best they can to help out. but it gets really REALLY old really fast. i don't think you could ever imagine what it's like to have nursing in your house unless you have it. and 16 hours a day. that's 2/3 of the day, of your LIFE, that these people are in your house. i wouldn't even want my best friend in my house that much, let alone a stranger i never met who happens to have RN behind their name! the vent, the medical supplies, the medical procedures, the oxygen, the tubes and wires attached to my baby, i can handle all of it. what i can't handle so well is ALL THE FRIGGIN NURSES UP IN MY GRILL ALL THE DAMN TIME!

okay. good. glad i got that off my chest. so hopefully this reduction of nursing hours will do me some good and keep me out of the looney bin, which is where i was headed. and hopefully my brain can stop torturing me with these saline and toilet paper dreams!

16 July 2011

status update and etc...

well it's a new day and i'm feeling much better now. i woke up at 5:30 to relieve the night-shift nurse who leaves at 6AM because...(insert drum roll here)...we have NO DAY NURSE TODAY...(insert applause and tears of joy.) i actually get to relax and chill in my own house in the morning without someone talking in my ear immediately as soon as i wake up about this or that      all.   morning.   long.....rowan is still snoozing in his crib at this point, but i'm so excited about the fact that when he wakes up and needs something, I will be the one who gets it for him. i'm sure there is a parent somewhere reading this saying, "oh my god this lady has all the free child-care in the world and she's bitching about it. what a numbskull!" but believe me when i say it gets old fast. yes i can sleep in and leave the house unrestricted whenever i please and it does come in handy sometimes, but the trade-off is huge, as i believe i've made it perfectly clear in this and other posts.

i had the thought that, at some point, there might actually be a nurse somewhere who reads this and is offended at all the complaining i do. and that's fine. all i can say is, it's nothing personal. most of you are REALLY great, and somehow make a seemingly unbearable situation somewhat tolerable. but i'm sure you already understand the complexities inherent in the job you do. and hell, it's my blog and i'll cry if i want to.

so now that i got the obligatory bitch-fest out of the way, i am proud to announce that rowan had his early intervention therapy evaluation about a week ago, and they felt he was behaving on a 3-month-old level, which jives with his adjusted age. this is great news, as we have been told that, due to his prematurity, he is at risk for having developmental delays. so far, he isn't showing it, though, and the news was good so we'll take it! another good piece of news is that his hearing really seems to be improving since he got home. preemies are at risk for hearing loss, and when he left the rehab, his speech therapist was very concerned that he might not be hearing as well as he should. i tended to agree. he didn't startle to loud noises, and generally didn't respond when talked to. he failed his first hearing screen in the NICU, but the nurse that day told me he was very agitated for the test and that could be part of the reason why, but this obviously added to our concern. we follow up with audiology on july 22nd, but in the meantime since coming home, he has started to show more signs that he can hear us. he is startling and responding to voices more often than he used to. our primary care doctor told us a few weeks ago that some babies who spent a lot of time in NICU are used to so much noise pollution that they need to be in a quiet environment for a while before they start to differentiate sounds. i'm hoping she was right.

in other news, rowan is starting to get used to his passy-muir (or "speaking") valve. he still isn't 100% back to where he was before we discovered the old one was broken, but some days we can leave it on for over 2 hours without him being too bothered...a big improvement from 5 minutes at a time only a couple weeks ago. he is also learning how to make some vowel sounds which is just the cutest thing ever to watch. he is starting to make shapes with his little lips and say "ahs" and "ohs," and then smiles like he just did something really awesome (which he absolutely did!). the other new thing he's doing is something we call "the lip trick" which is where he tries to suck his top lip into his mouth and make a smacking noise. fascinating, i know. i could watch him do that for hours.

and my little boy is growing like a weed! at his doctor's appt on friday he weighed in at 12lbs 2oz, which is at least two pounds heavier than he was when he left rehab one month prior. my goodwill donation pile is growing, too, as he doesn't fit in most of his clothes anymore. the boy is literally too big for his boppy!

we also made some changes to his feeding schedule which involved increasing his total volume (since he grew), and ditching the overnight continuous feeds. his doctor likes to use these as a way to "sneak in" extra calories and promote growth. it seems like a really good idea, but rowan's little gut didn't seem to like it, judging by the way he thrashed about in his crib all night, not quite waking up, but not resting comfortably either...and very gassy. most other parent accounts that i've read said pretty much the same thing about continuous overnight feeds: that they seem to increase gassiness/fussiness/cramping during sleep. and it just makes common sense that when you're sleeping, you're body should be resting, gut included, and not trying to do the work of digestion all night long. so long story short we got rid of the continuous feeds and rowan just gets 100ml bolus feeds, either by mouth or by g-tube, 6 times a day. i get to pick the times...as long as he gets 600ml per 24-hour period the docs are happy. right now i have the night nurses putting two of them through the g-tube while he sleeps, but will soon try to spread them out so he can have more periods of restfulness overnight. so far he is sleeping much better by all reports. so that's that.

well i'd say that's a pretty decent update. the only other thing i guess everyone usually asks is "when can he come off the vent?" and the answer is, of course, it depends. but it definitely won't be before the end of this winter. rowan's lung doctor feels he still has some beefing up to do before the big event, and also that it would be thoroughly unwise to try and wean him during cold and flu season. if rowan gets a cold or the flu, that is when he will really need the vent, i'm told. so here's looking forward to a winter full of tubes, wires, and home health nurses. thanks for reading, and i hope everyone is having a large day!

29 June 2011

pulling another all-nighter

well we've been home for three weeks, and have had three nursing call-offs already. hope this isn't going to be a pattern. for as much as i bitch about having nurses here all the time, we really do need them. anyway, it's another night with no coverage, and i sent billy to bed early because he works in the morning. ro is asleep, he's been sleeping through the night for a while now (hope i don't regret saying that later!) i'm not too sure what i'm going to do to keep myself awake all night...the day nurse comes on at six, so i guess i better brew some coffee!

25 June 2011

freedom has a price

billy and i are about to embark on a night without nurses. it's a blessing and a curse. pro: there are no folks coming to meddle around in my private life tonight. con: i am going to be pretty tired tomorrow. we sleep in shifts, and it's my turn to go first. night-night!

plastic tubes and wires

lucinda williams has this song called "concrete and barbed wire." it's always been one of my favorite songs; it's about the things that come in between us. she sings about her man who's in jail. she can't go visit him because of all that lies in the way..."it's only made of concrete and barbed wire." i'll see if i'm web-savvy enough to post a you-tube video of the song on here. anyway, through all this stuff with rowan i often thought of that song, except i sing "plastic tubes and wires" instead of concrete and barbed wire. rowan and i are both hooked up to our plastic tubes and wires right now, across the room from each other. he's on his breathing stuff, and i'm on the breastpump. and there's a(nother) nurse over there holding and rocking and talking to him while i'm over here making his breakfast. don't get me wrong, we wouldn't be able to do all this without these nurses, and most of them are great. we are very fortunate to even have this little miracle baby in our lives. but something about it is just, well, strange...

24 June 2011

our screwy life

i am sitting on my green glider rocker that was meant for the baby room. instead it is in the living room, which is the new baby room. we moved the crib, etc... downstairs when we realized that it would be hard to take rowan up and down the steps, due to the heavy equipment he is attached to. there is a nurse sitting at the table across the way, charting. she's here to watch rowan while me and billy sleep upstairs. i barely know her, really just met her, but it's her job to watch rowan and make sure he stays safe through the night. so here she is, charting in my living room. it's strange what we can adapt to if we have to. billy is watching a documentary on west virginia coal-miners. there's a lady singing about black lungs. rowan makes a noise and the nurse gets up to soothe him. i am immediately jealous. that should be me, not some stranger. but she's just doing her job and he's going back to sleep and here i am typing about it all. when i was pregnant i was excited to have one of those basinettes that hook on to the side of the bed so you can just reach over and touch your baby if he stirs in his sleep. instead he sleeps on a different floor and if i want to go see him in the middle of the night i have to explain myself to a stranger in my living room. now the lady on tv is singing about unions and picket lines. the nurse is opening a bag of pretzels. i am still rocking in my glider and ro is still asleep. i am so thankful for our weird, frustrating, scary, fucked up lives.