I've heard that question a lot since Thursday night and I'm sick of it! I'm sure Valerie is too. We just got home this afternoon from the hospital. I've been there since Thursday night with Val who is dealing with a Kidney Stone. She's in a lot of pain. Everytime a nurse would talk to her they'd ask her the above question and have her rate her pain on the scale of 0 to 10 (zero being no pain, ten being the worst ever pain).
It started Thursday morning when she was getting ready for school. As she came up the landing stairs I saw her double over and complain that she had pain...pointing to her upper right quadrant. Next time I saw her she was sitting on the floor in the hall. She insisted she was ok, got up and went to school.
I got everyone out the door, got Olivia and I ready and went to my dr appt. (I'll talk about that later) As I got to the doctor's I realized I left my cellphone home. OOPS! Then I hit Walmart and a dollar store. I noticed that Tom's work truck was home already as I pulled up to the house. Tom was then coming out the door and walking up the driveway. I thought he was going back to work, he was getting into Drew's car with a crying Val. He was taking her to the dr's office. It seems they (Tom, Drew, Pat, the school nurse) tried to get ahold of me all afternoon but couldn't, so Tom had to leave work and pick up a sick Val. I begged Tom to let me take Val to the dr's but he didn't switch places with me...meaney!!
Val's gym teacher noticed her leaving class and going into the locker room so followed her in. She said Val was throwing up in a stall for quite a while and then sat on the floor (ICK!) She begged Val not to pass out on her with the stall door locked. Val came out and the teacher had to drag Val to the school nurse. You see Val had plans and she didn't want them messed up by any crumby illness. With there being no school on Friday she was having a few girls come home with her on the bus for a birthday sleeperover. So much for those plans. Even with her throwing up many times in the nurses office and Tom on the way. Val told the girls to pick their bus passes out of the trash and get on her bus anyways. That would've been fun....NOT!
Dr "I" saw Val, did an exam and a blood test and sent her to the ER for more tests. I met Tom up there with Michelle and Val's friend F. The diagnosis was appendisitis but they wanted to do a contrast CT to make sure first. After she'd drank the initial dose of radioactive contrast the surgeon saw her and said it they hadn't started the CT process already he'd just assume take her into surgery and take the appendix out.
I asked if Val could have something for pain and they gave her a shot of demerol. I had to go potty so told Val I'd be right back and left her with F (Tom and Michelle went out to get the bags we'd packed for Val and myself). Val complained that her arm burned. I assured her it was the medicine going into her arm and left. I was gone for about TWO minutes tops. I walk in to see Val with a VERY red and splotty arm raised in the air. I didn't even walk all the way into the room, I turned around and ran to the nurse's desk to let them know she was breaking out in hives. The stopped the demerol, gave her benedryl and moved her to a room where they could hook her up monitors to constantly check her vitals for sign of shutting down. Luckily it was uneventful.
Tom, Michelle and F left and Val and I went to radiology for her CT scan. They then put us into a regular room for the night. About an hour later we learned that Val didn't have appendisitis but it looked like she had a kidney stone. They reluctantly gave her morphine through her IV, luckily she didn't get hives and did ok on it. She was allowed to have a dose every hour...it didn't help. The poor thing. We didn't sleep all night. If we didn't keep up on the Zofran she would start throwing up again.
It was confirmed during the day that it was a kidney stone and we saw a urologist on Friday night. He told us it could be hours, days, week or months before she passed the stone. Being in the hospital was mostly for pain maintenance (outside of a fever and infection control). We decided to keep her overnight again because the pain medication wasn't doing exactly what we wanted and she hadn't taken anything by mouth (incase she needed surgery) for so long. I was afraid we'd get home, she'd start throwing up and whatever oral painkillers they gave her wouldn't stay down and be effective.
On Saturday morning she seemed a bit better but was extremely weak, nauseated and dizzy. It did seem that her pain was lessening a bit. The dr informed us that after the inital irritation and extreme pain, the body would calm down for a while until it started passing again. Seemed we were settling into this calm now. As the evening went on she seemed to get around a bit better and wasn't nauseated. Sunday morning we were both raring to go home. We got home about 3pm. She's on an antibiotic, anti-nausea and pain med.
Tonight she seems to be a bit more pain again. During the day the pain meds had been doing the job and she didn't request them as soon as she could. Tonight she asked for them an hour earlier and was in tears after pottying. She also had to have anti nausea meds for the first time since yesterday. I wish she didn't have to go through this but I sure do wish she'd hurry up and be done with it! At least she's sleeping for now.
She's extremely disappointed that her perfect attendance record will be broken tomorrow. She's had it for at least the last 2 yrs.....it might be 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment