As if losing my husband weren't hard enough, Bugalug decided, less than three weeks later, that it would be fun to take an early morning trip to the ER and spend almost a week in the hospital with pneumonia and a partially collapsed lung.
A little over a week ago, Bugalug started complaining of a sore throat. No other symptoms, so no big deal, but I was on the watch for strep. Thursday, she kept saying she felt sick, but nothing came of it until Thursday evening. Once she got started, she couldn't stop. Over the next few hours, she woke up more than a dozen times to heave. I stayed awake to help her when she needed it and to monitor her. Around 4am, I noticed she was having trouble breathing and was pale. I put her in the truck and took her to the emergency room. I was asked if she was up to date on her vaccines and the ER doc about had a fit when I told him we'd stopped vaccinating. Long story short, a few months ago my former vaccine enthusiast husband started reading more about them and came to understand my skepticism.
The ER doctor told me she had pneumonia and started on a rant about how not vaccinating her opens her up to "all kinds of infections", implying that a vaccine could have prevented this visit, but never suggesting any suspicion that she had a vaccine preventable illness. He told me they would be admitting her and his main concern was trying to avoid putting a tube down her throat to breathe for her. This was a complete exaggeration. Her breathing was labored, but she was breathing, and her breathing was already easing, thanks to the breathing treatments they'd given her.
Once she was stabilized, we were put in an ambulance to a children's hospital 30 minutes away. They weren't sure if I would be allowed to accompany her, but when the ambulance got there, the paramedic said he would prefer I ride along.
At the children's hospital, they looked at the x-ray and said what was showing up wasn't pneumonia, but a pneumothorax, essentially a partially collapsed lung. I was horrified, but they assured me I had done nothing wrong, that this sometimes happens with forceful vomiting or coughing (she'd been doing both). What had happened, they explained, was that she developed a small tear in her lung that allowed air to escape into the chest wall, placing pressure on the lung. They also explained that it would likely resolve itself with extra oxygen, but if it got worse, she could need a chest tube to relieve the pressure. They also did a nasal swab, which tested positive for a cold. Yep, this all happened not because of anything that could be prevented with a vaccine, but because of the common cold.
They did follow up x-rays every morning (at 5am!) to monitor the progression. For a couple of days, there was little progress, but the third day showed significant difference, and the fourth day showed it was gone. However, the follow up x-rays did show pneumonia, and the doctor said it's common for x-ray results to lag behind what is actually happening with pneumonia.
So Bugalug spent 5 days trying to get every person that walked into her room to play with her. No doctor, nurse, housekeeping staff, room service person, or child specialist was safe walking into her room. Sure she had me, but she has me all the time, I'm boring compared to all those new people. As for me, it was just about the rudest possible awakening to single parenthood imaginable.
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