At the hospital…again

Tonight I’m posting from my ds13’s hospital room in Haifa.

We spent hours in the pediatric emergency room, after beginning our day at the pediatrician, being referred to an orthopedist, and then being sent here.  Do you know what tomorrow is?  The end of the world according to the Mayan calendar.  Hence, all the programs on the National Geographic Channel (which is what was showing in the emergency room) were about this.  The rapture, mark of the beast, apocolypse, huge amounts of birds and fish dying in a close geographic range, ten ways the world could come to an end…somewhat interesting but very inappropriate for a children’s waiting room.  I passed my sentiments on to the staff.

We’re here because ds woke up on Shabbos morning with pain in his hip, which got worse within a short time.  It’s pretty intense and it’s constant.  He’s spent all day and night trying to find a comfortable position to sit or lay in, and only gets up to walk if it’s absolutely necessary.  Painkillers dulled the pain but it wasn’t passing and I was concerned about the possibility of infection in his hip joint.

The xrays showed everything was fine with the bone itself and he didn’t have any external signs of infection, but to make a long story short,  the blood work showed an infection so they decided to hospitalize him for treatment.   I’ve spent this week being really concerned and I’m relieved that this will be treated now.

In light of the upcoming apocolypse I should be appreciative for being alive :), and I am glad we have access to good medical care, but I’m honestly getting tired of hospitals.  Prior to moving here, we rarely saw a doctor and had just three emergency room visits for all of the kids together throughout the years.  I’ve been to more doctors than I want to think about, we’ve been to the emergency room at least six times, and that’s not including the four days I was in the hospital after Yirmiyahu was born, the daily visits until he was released from the NICU, or the visits to my mother when she was hospitalized recently for hip replacement surgery.

When we were told to take ds to the emergency room, thanks to my increased familiarity with four area hospitals (five if you count the geriatric hospital my mom went to for rehab) – two in Haifa, one in Tzfat, and one in Nahariya – I was able to quickly decide which one would be best.  Since every time I’ve gone to a new hospital it’s taken time and effort to figure out how to get there, it was a nice side benefit of my past experiences that today I didn’t have to do that.  Since they’re all good, the biggest remaining part of the equation was which was easiest to get to via public transportation so that we can regularly visit him, which is why I chose Haifa.  It’s further from Karmiel than either Tzfat or Nahariya, but there are buses a few times an hour – and for some strange reason, the bus fare is a bit less than the other two cities even though it’s further away.

This is the same hospital that my mother was at for her hip replacement surgery but when I stayed overnight with her, I had a plain plastic chair to sleep on.  In the pediatric department, there are cushioned chairs that fold out into a bed, which is is so much more comfortable!  As of now I’m assuming he’ll be here for Shabbos, so I’ll stay until Friday afternoon when dd16 will come to spend Shabbos here with him.  Even though I wish we didn’t need to be here, I do appreciate being able to spend time with just one child without anything else that I need to do. It’s actually almost relaxing.

The nurse has just come in and said he needs to have another xray (at 9 pm!), so off we go!

Avivah

14 thoughts on “At the hospital…again

  1. Dear Aviva,
    Refua Sheleima to ds13! I am so sorry to hear you are in a hospital tekufa. BE”H you will move on to a simcha tekufa or at least something positive real soon! I have a friend who spent weeks at a time for several months in a hospital with her son. Afterwards he wrote a comedy play on many of her observations there. Attitude is everything! Keep up your positive outlook! I am so impressed with how you had your wits about you when choosing where to go!
    Kol tuv!
    Shoshana

  2. Never a dull moment, eh? Refuah Shleima to your son. I have recently spent quite a bit of time on the pediatric ward w. one our kids (b’eh, the worst of it is over now), and I do agree there is a slight silver lining in being able to just be with one child and have the “nothingness” of the hospital routine to go by. Hang in there, Avivah!

  3. Avivah, a friend’s son recently went through something simiilar called “SCFI”, will forward you the info about it. Basically, the growth plate gets displaced, slides off the bone and pain/infection can result. Hatzlacha!

  4. oops, it is “SCFE”, not SCFI, slipped caputal femoral epiphysis, or slippage of the epiphysis (growth plate) from the head of the femur, at the hip.

    1. Painkillers are a beautiful think Rachelli! Last night he slept better than he has all week. We had given him over the counter grade painkillers but the hospital has more powerful stuff.

  5. Avivah refuah shleimah! Did they rule out appendicitis? I don’t know y it’s the first thougt that came to mind when I started reading. Hopefully not but I had a strong urge to bring it up.

    1. Thanks for the suggestion, Estee. No, it’s not appendicitis but an infection of the hip – a pretty serious one. Everything that I’ve read said it’s critical to catch it time to avoid long term damage and I fervently hope that we did.

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