Our first healthcare scare
Let me start by saying that everyone is fine. Don’t worry.
Given our recent experience this past weekend, I’d like to kindly remind everyone to take care of yourselves. Please wash your hands, especially if you come to our house and use antibacterial gel/hand wash when washing your hands is not an option.
On to the story…
We had our first “scare” this past Friday. The kids have had some cold symptoms over the past week, including Meredith. Meredith was pretty crabby for a day or two, but nothing that made us worry or a little Tylenol couldn’t take care of. She did have a fever, but again, not big enough to get our panties in a bunch. Well, Brook and Emma woke up with fevers on Friday; over 101 fevers. Well, that’s enough to get mommy worked up. She called the clinic. Understandably, they wanted to see the kids. Angela scheduled an appointment to go in around 11:30. (For those of you who are reading this and don’t live in the River Falls community, you need to understand that the flu/swine flu has taken over our community. Rumors are just rumors, but I’ve heard from teachers and parents that absenteeism at some of the RF schools has been as highs as 25-30% and hundreds of H1N1 cases have been all over the UWRF campus in the past couple weeks. Seems like everyone is sick or knows someone who is sick.)
In the meantime; Mom, Dad, and Meredith went to Ellsworth, WI for a free H1N1 vaccine for caregivers of young children, young children and other very high risk people. We stood in line for an hour, but we got our shots. Kind of ironic that we stood outside (in crappy weather) in line for part of the time to get a flu shot. Anyway, after we got done, we picked up Brook and Emma at home. The five of us made our way to the clinic.
Our time at the clinic didn’t go well and I’d like to leave out the details for now. We didn’t get to see our normal doctor as he was understandably out on Friday. That was not our problem. He had worked the overnight shift in the ER. Needless to say, they couldn’t provide the services necessary to take care of our needs so we were sent on an “Emergency” trip to the new Emergency Dept at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis. So, I drove like a mad man to Minneapolis to another comedy of errors at the brand new ED at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis. We have nothing to say but good things about our time when the kids were in the NICU there, but they clearly have some things to work out in the new ED. One of the nurses used a very poor reference to how things were going in the new ED Dept. He said, “This is kind of like in the movie Jurassic Park where they brought in some people for a dry run before they opened the park.” I replied quickly with, “it didn’t turn out so well in the end of that movie…maybe you should work on your movie references before you go that direction again.” Needless to say, we got home around 8 pm. Brook has something that warranted an antibiotic, but Emma is fine. Nothing was diagnosed, but Tamiflu was prescribed for all 5 of them. It’s unlikely that they have the flu or H1N1; most likely a cold. I understand that with premature children, we have to take things pretty seriously, especially early on whenever possible. I don’t regret the decisions we made or the decisions of any of the physicians. It just seemed like if something could go wrong, did go wrong. Thank God is wasn’t an emergency.
It was a very long day and our first real experience regarding the healthcare of our children since they were discharged from the hospital. Thank you so much to the people who helped us out logistically during the day. Let’s hope that we can keep those experiences to a minimum.
Lastly, thank you Ageson Family. You’re help this past weekend was huge!!!
BTW…2 posts in as many days. How do you like them apples? I’ve always been an overachiever, that’s how we got in to this mess. (that’s my smart ass coming through…)
Until next time…