Kendall usually pulls her crazinesses on a Friday. But I guess a Wednesday afternoon of a week when daddy, memaw AND poppa are all gone out of the state, there’s a snowstorm threat, and mommy can hardly breathe is good enough for her medical drama!
She woke up from her nap this afternoon retching (dry heaving), which is weird in and of itself, only because she has been having a pretty ok week tummywise. Her urine has been looking much worse the past couple days, so we finally did a dipstick (urinalysis) on it at home. It definitely was “off” (lots of protein, leukocytes and nitrates – indicators of a UTI), but we somewhat expect it to be off more often than not. The nitrates and protein were in much larger quantities than typical though, along with a few other random findings.
Of course she woke up right as our nurses were changing shift and we had another new nurse coming to meet our family/see if there was a mutual fit for nursing services. She sure got a quick induction into the world of kendall when kendall started vomiting (which includes a lot of retchy choking trying to get the vomit actually up through the knot we had surgically tied in her esophagus and stomach to prevent her from vomiting), and we were leaning her over the kitchen sink, attaching extension tubes and drainage bags to her G and J tubes and pushing IV zofran into her broviac. Just another day around here!
The vomiting craziness continued throughout the afternoon, in spite of 3 doses of her anti-vomiting combo (IV zofran plus IV benadryl), including some oral zofran pushed into her J-tube (which actually induced more vomiting. she has a slight fever, increased need for oxygen, and high heartrate. All of those things kind of go together (a fever will naturally induce a high heartrate, and that can lead to lower oxygen saturations) – but they are all unusual for Kendall’s “normal”.
The only time I’ve ever seen her vomit like she is vomiting now is when she is about to cross over into sepsis (not a good situation, she is typically very very sick when she starts vomiting). She is nauseated most of every day – but never actually gets real puke up. Dry heaves, sure. But this is….confusing. I don’t know what to make of it. All I know is – it’s going to be a long night.
Ben’s flight yesterday got cancelled due to a snowstorm, but he did fly out this afternoon to the West Coast. My parents (my other backup!) are in orlando with my sister’s family all this week. Right now as it stands that would mean if Kendall spikes a fever in the middle of the night or otherwise takes a turn for the worse, I would be packing up all four kids by myself to schlep her to the local ER, where they would likely have to immediately call for transport to Milwaukee. That would mean i would have to send Kendall in an ambulance by herself while i followed behind with the other three kids, and then got all settled into a hospital room up in milwaukee with everyone now exhausted.
Now that scenario is highly unlikely to happen, but that’s the reality of what it would be like if she got sicker overnight. I have a couple friends who are willing to come sit with the girls if I do have to go to the ER, but no one who the girls really know very well. Kaylen has already had a very rough past couple of nights herself (very bad leg pains resulting in her not being able to walk/stand on her own), and would likely wake up to a “stranger” in the house and go into full on meltdown mode. Kealey is moody about her birthday being ruined by having to take daddy to the airport instead of having a fun birthday lunch like we had planned, and now the possibility of her sister needing to go to the hospital has her in another mood tailspin. Karissa would of course take it all in stride but would go to her happy place and likely walk into traffic without noticing because she is up gathering clouds to get away from the craziness.
Like I said – it would all work out, IF it even came to that – but this is the very real scenario we have to deal with when Kendall gets sick. We do a LOT of stuff at home to avoid having to go to the ER/hospital until she’s very sick – but tonight, all of those things are only helping minimally. if she is trying to get sick, she’s gonna find a way to do it eventually. i just hope she holds out until the logistics work out a little bit better.
Even better scenario – it’s just some random tummy bug. i know “it’s going around”. The only hole in this theory is that Kendall’s gut on a GOOD DAY is “tummy bug central”. Her regular gut flora would probably have most of us healthy gut folks praying to the porcelain god. So the thought of her having a tummy flu type virus thing going on doesn’t quite fit what I’m seeing, but i’m happily trying to ignore that and pray that it IS just some regular tummy bug. Preferably one that doesn’t spread to everyone in the family. I already am dealing with some crappy head/chest cold myself. A tummy bug running through this house would just be the ICING on the cupcake. But far preferable to the alternative of Kendall having a line infection or UTI-gone-wild.
I’m already exhausted, but won’t sleep good in my own bed because I won’t hear Kendall puking/setting off alarms. So I need to sleep on the floor of her room so I can make sure she is not vomiting/choking on her vomit and reposition her as she needs. And hopefully she sleeps fine through the night and I just wake up with a sore back and we go on about our crazy normal lives.
I’m off to go layer some blankets on the floor to soften it up a little bit.
Thank you for checking in here – and for your faithful prayers for all of us.
love and hugs~
terra