PEDS

So as if preparing for a move across the country wasn't stressful enough, my kids had to pile it on that month with some fun pediatric medicine scares (sarcasm intended).

Pediatric ER

One day Brenn was not acting like herself. She is usually jabbering away and running around the house keeping up with her brother. But this particular day she just lay totally still on either mine or Jake's shoulder not really making any banter.  We knew she wasn't feeling well, but she gave us quite the scare later that evening. She threw up so I put her in the tub to clean her up. She was feeling pretty warm, so I kept her in just a diaper after the tub. She was laying on the bed like a zombie, her eyes not really focusing on anything. Then came the labored breathing and then her body started lightly shaking where I was mentally preparing myself for her to start ceasing.  We called her Pediatrician and told him what was going on and he told us we needed to take her in to Primary Children's ER immediately. It was so scary! It was bedtime, and we knew a visit to the ER could be quite lengthy, so Jake's sister Allie and her husband Ryan were awesome and let us drop Carder off at their house on our way to the hospital. Ryan helped Jake give Brenn a blessing and then we hurried along the Primary Childrens.  Brenn was still pretty out of it. She felt really warm and she was not responsive when you'd talk to her or smile at her etc. Primary Childrens got us in super quick. After we got to our room like 10 Doctors/Nurses piled in the room to examine Brenn and evaluate what was going on.  She had a fever of 103 and her heart rate was pretty high.  She also had a little cough. They decided to give her a steroid and then watch her for a while to see if anything else needed to be done.  The steroid (the one they give for croupe) worked like a miracle within minutes she was back to her normal self wanting to read books and run around the hospital room (not so easy since she was hooked up to all those monitoring wires). They watched her for a few more hours and her fever dissipated as her heart rate returned to normal and then the let us go home. One of the scariest experiences ever! I always thought Carder would be our first class ticket to the ER with all his shenanigans, but instead Brenn was our first (and hopefully last) visit to an Emergency Room on a child's behalf.

Brenn in the ER room

We got home in the middle of the night (far too late for dealing with soaking those super sticky monitor patches to get them off). Now that she was back to herself I could appreciate how cute she looked with them, and I had to snap a picture.

Pediatric Dentistry

Bah, just thinking about our dentistry issues makes my blood boil all over again! We had found a pediatric dentist that we really liked, and at Carder's last appointment they told us he needed to come back for a filling in one of his back molars. For some reason our insurance decided to switch around the providers they covered, so we took Carder to one of their preferred providers to try and get this all taken care of before we headed across the country. 

To make a long story short after several hours (many of which were spent waiting in the lobby for our appointment) we had the consultation from H-E-double hockey sticks. Basically the dentist tells me he needs like $5000 worth of work, it would not be getting done today (which is what we were promised on the phone when we made the appointment since we had to leave for Boston in a week) and then threatening me with possible extraction of a tooth that won't grow in till he's like 8 or 10 etc. (No Bueno!!!) After being talked down to like I was an idiot I left almost in tears. 

We ended up taking him back to our original dentist and he didn't need half of the stuff that other place told us that he did. They totally worked with our time table since it was literally crunch time to get this all taken care of before we headed out. Well, Jake took him and he got through the shots to numb the area etc and then they sprayed some water and he totally freaks out because it felt bad to him or something. So they told us to take him home and come back in a couple of days, and they'd take care of it. They even gave us a prescription for Valium (ya it totally worked opposite on Carder, instead of a calming effect he was bouncing off the walls!). Well, I took him to the next  appointment and he sat in the chair but once the dentist came in he started freaking out. The dentist stepped out for a while so I could attempt to calm him down. We read some books, and I tried to reason with him. When that didn't work, I tried to bribe him, but to no avail. Dentist visit #3 was again a no go due to a hysterical little man.

Now they were telling us he had to be sedated. So they figured out a day they could fit us it because now we were just days away from pulling out to head off for Boston. He got through the procedure but the sedative made him super angry. Like he was throwing punches at Jake etc.  I cross my fingers that drugs never enter my little boy's body again so we never have to experience that human hulk again.  The meds wore off after a little bit and he was back to normal. After far too many dental visits and a small fortune later the dental work was done and we were ready to head off to MA. Needless to say we have ratcheted up the morning/nightly brushing routine adding floss sticks as well as mouthwash to hopefully never have to go through that EVER again!