The adventures of the ER continue...

As you all know from my previous post, my husband's in the hospital. Well, last night I decided to come home to get some rest because what good am I to anyone if I get sick as well. It was a good thought, and I actually believe there was a higher power in making me take that decision. At 2:15 am my mom came frantic to my room with the baby in her arms because he was dry-heaving. She thought he couldn't breathe and was choking; he was actually throwing up massively. In her panic, and in me trying to calm her down and shake off my drowsiness, I grabbed the baby, but as I walked with him towards the room to assess the situation, I slipped on his vomit on the floor and took a nasty fall. Thankfully, I was able to spare L any of the impact; I am now wearing a nice multi-colored bruise on my leg and a small scrape on my arm. Badges of courage.

Anyway, after that scare, L was still throwing up periodically, so I called the doctor's answering service. I had to call THREE TIMES to finally get a call back almost TWO HOURS LATER! I was livid, and you better believe the office is going to hear about that! I was thisclose to calling 911, although I knew it really wasn't that much of an emergency - but he wouldn't stop throwing up. Once they finally called me, around 4ish in the morning, I was told to take him to the ER. Great. So my mom and I gathered everything, Tupperware container and paper towels included, and headed to the nearest children's ER. Well, as if that wasn't bad enough, as soon as we stepped out, we were blanketed by a dense cover of fog. I could barely see five feet in front of me! Driving in that kind of fog at those wee hours of the morning on a Sun morning was not my idea of a fun drive at all. If I don't have to do that ever again, I'll be quite happy. But we made it, in one piece, and five hours later, a couple more sessions of vomit, and a shot to stop the vomiting, we were discharged. He was diagnosed with some sort of stomach virus, and we were told of the lovely possibility of Mr. Diarrhea coming to join Ms. Vomit. Lovely.

I am thankful, though, that the chain of events happened the way they did. If I had not decided to come home to sleep, if L hadn't woken up earlier and my mom hadn't put him in bed with her, the outcome could've been a lot scarier. L didn't start throwing up until my mom picked him up. If he'd remained laying down, he could've choked - a VERY scary thought for me...

SO yes, my weekend has been so much fun. What a wonderful way to spend V-day weekend.

Thank goodness for Wi-fi

I've been seeking some healthy vibes for my family lately. My son had been sick with what appeared to be a mild case of Hand-Foot-Mouth disease, only to get a runny nose and cough right at the tail end of that. Then, my husband has been feeling ill for the last 3+ weeks, only to go in the the ER yesterday and get admitted into the hospital. No one knows what's going on and we get some best case and worst case scenarios. Gotta love those. Ironically, a year ago yesterday, my dad suffered a stroke that sent him to the ER and this morning (V-Day) a year ago he passed away. :*(

We originally got put into a shared room. For the largest part of last night until the early hours of today, the speckled curtains separated our side with our neighbor's side. We could see no one, but we could hear all. Next to us was, it seemed, an older man. I imagined a wrinkly old man with no family. He sounded much like my father did when he had had his amputation surgery back in 1999 (or was it 2000? I can't remember anymore...) and he was on morphine drip to ease the pain. Morphine drip causes the patient to hallucinate. My father would see spiders down the wall and he would act as if he were giving communion (he was a former priest). Well, our neighbor spent most of the night between a seemingly uneasy sleep and crying out random phrases and names, with "Abui" and other names being the ones I remember most. He had a nurse with him at all times, and quite frankly, he was down-right rude at times. But I don't think he knew what he was saying/doing. This morning, out of nowhere, we hear: "Hey, why are you sitting next to that ugly man?" to which the nurse replied, "Papi, you're in the hospital." Needless to say, we didn't sleep much.

In one of the bathroom breaks, the curtain was pulled back some, and to my surprise, the sounds coming from our neighbor were not those of a seventy- or eighty-something-year-old man but of a younger man, probably in his early forties or late thirties. He must have been in some serious pain because of the pain killers, but from the myriad of conversations, we caught that he was on dialysis, that he lived with an aunt, and that he had a wife and child. The few moments he was semi-coherent, we could tell he spoke Spanish and English, but most of the time we could barely decipher the language. It made me sad.

But back to this post's title: thank goodness for wi-fi! Last night, while my mom stayed home with my munchkin, I schlepped my bag with papers to grade, laptop, and some sweaters and miscellaneous gadgets to keep my husband company at the hospital. As it turns out, the hospital now has free wi-fi, so I've been able to keep in contact with you guys via email, and I've been able to go through all the blogs. I've also been able to check my emails and google the various medical terms that have come up during our stay.

So that's about it. It's been a tiring week and it looks like it's going to be a tiring weekend. Is it spring break yet?