George has been sick and try as we might to avoid it, Clayton got sick too. Which as it does nearly every time he gets sick, meant ER visits for us. Yay! :(. This is why we stick to our bubble so to speak...to avoid midnight hospital visits. Here's how the past 24 went...
I knew since the wee hours of Tuesday morning that Clayton was getting sick. He had a slight croup sound to his cough while sleeping. Watched him close all day, knowing what was likely coming. Ate and drank fine and acted fine. Little coughing, lite runny nose. Went to bed last night still listening...sure enough it started. So we gave him steroid around 12:30am, did inhalers; nothing seemed to change. So around 1:30am we headed to Thomas. Thankfully, because Clayton is well, as Clayton is, the triage nurse let us wait in a second triage room instead of in the main waiting area. So awesome! However, we waited...and waited. During which time he got a fever of 102.7. But as we waited for three and a half hours to get a room, his symptoms all began dissipating. So literally when they finally came to take us to a room it almost seemed pointless to be there. We decided to forgo seeing the doctor and go home. We were tired and his emergent symptoms had dissipated and we weren't fond of the idea of another 4 to 6 hours in the ER. Especially when we were already SO tired and Clayton was SO irritated because the hospital internet is worthless and won't play his videos. We knew going home meant we would likely find ourselves in Pensacola today...and we did. But we have been so impressed by them that it was a relief more than an inconvenience to have to go to another hospital.
Back to Clayton...During the hour before he woke he began to breathe a little noisier again and upon waking his cough sounded a bit like residual croup. I tried to bring him to his new Peds office, but they had no appointments today and were closed tomorrow, so here we sit in the Pediatric ER at Sacred Heart. Because here's the thing...we still felt like Clayton should see a doc for respiratory reasons with his history, but we would have likely had to come to the ER no matter what for them to do blood cultures on his port since he had a fever. Fever with port = mandatory blood cultures. Also, fever with ureter stent = needed urine specimen. All to be sure none of these foreign objects are causing infections. Basically once the fever happened we were destined to be in the ER. Again I have to say how much I adore their pediatric ER. We had a room within 15 minutes of being here spoke to someone within another 10 minutes, had a plan, got stuff done and the only reason we are still here as I write this is because we need his CBC and BMP blood results before we head home. They take an hour to come back.
Such a pleasant experience though; especially since this is my first ER visit without George or my mom. Well, me and the kiddo flew solo in NYC ERs a couple times, but that's different. I always have Clayton's essentials ready to go, but it helped a lot today having time to pack extra juice and food and such. We both threw on our pjs and hit the road. No point in dressing up to sit in a hospital.
Anyway, we are waiting to head home, shouldn't be much longer. I did just find out he tested positive for the flu. And based on the CDCs reports on the effectiveness of the flu vaccine this year, no it does not change my mind about giving it to Clayton at all. If I had it to do again, I still wouldn't give it to him. Shoot even if I had, we would likely still be in the same spot we are in today. I'll come back in another posts about my vaccine findings and what my preferences will be, but for now I can still say I am not a fan of the flu vaccine. In previous years, the flu vaccine did not agree with him and so I think it best to abstain from that particular vaccine due to his history with it.
Y'all get home safe! Hope he gets to feeling better!!!
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