7.14.2014

Miss K is just keeping us on our toes

Today was officially the WORST Monday I have ever had in my life, well except for Miss K's birth day which was on a Monday and pretty bad for me, but today was close!

I had intended to call our new Pediatrician this morning to take baby brother in to check on his eyes, I wasn't overly concerned, it seemed like they were just sunburned but I wanted to make sure it wasn't something worse.  My morning was turned from slow going normal Monday to terrified rush when I got out of bed and went to check on my quiet children in their rooms, I checked Miss K first only to find her laying there awake but quite out of it.  I asked if she was OK and she replied "I'm cold mommy", I felt her forehead expecting a fever but instead found her cold as ice, I felt the rest of her body and limbs to find them ice cold as well, her bedroom was around 80 degrees, she was also sweating profusely, especially her face and nose which, when I wiped them dry, beaded with sweat again immediately.  I ran for the thermometer and stethoscope first checking her temperature, she was at a crazy low of 94 degrees, I checked and double checked only to get the same result.  When I checked her heart rate I immediately heard "lub-dub...pause...lub-dub...pause...dub dub...pause...lub-dub" (normal heart beat is steady "lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub"), I got the stop watch out and listened for a minute, her rate was about 55-60 beats per minute, her normal resting rate is around 110 bpm.  Of course I panicked, I wondered if Daddy had overdosed her the night before so I called to double check, he assured me he did it perfectly right.  I called our Cardiologist and left a message asking what I should do, though I know from experience it can sometimes take 24 hours for them to call me back so after a few minutes I decided we couldn't wait that long and called the Pediatrician's office to make an appointment for her and baby brother.  The receptionist didn't want me to wait to bring her in so she had me head over right then.  Picture this:  I hadn't been out of bed more than 15 minutes, I'm in my jammies and my hair and make-up are a complete mess (the one night I choose not to shower or wash my face before bed because I had just done so earlier that afternoon after camping), my kids are in jammies and none of us have eaten breakfast and because it's a Monday my mom was at work and couldn't leave and my little sister was at soccer practice so I had no sitter.  I had less than 10 minutes to somewhat dress all 3 kids, not even time to think about doing hair but I did insist on taking a moment to at least comb the knots from Miss K's hair, I threw whatever clothes I could easily find on and threw a hat on my head, also hastily washed the mascara off my face and re-applied to look a tiny bit presentable.  I scrambled around the house pouring the very last of the yogurt into to go pouches and making big brother a peanut butter sandwich and last minute remembering to grab sippy cups and filling with milk then rushing everyone out the door with whatever shoes we could find by the door.

Our Pediatrician did not like Miss K's symptoms.  He called the closest Pediatric Cardiologist, who happened to be the first one to treat Miss K before we found our EP Cardiologist, and asked for advice.  Together they determined we needed a full blood workup to check for heart failure and infections related to her symptoms, they also determined she needed a chest x-ray to check for heart enlargement and an EKG as well as a 24 hour holter monitor.  Oh and let's add in that baby brother needs to see an Opthalmologist for his eyes because it may not be sunburn but instead an infection of some type.  So our Pediatrician says "go eat lunch then go straight to the hospital to the lab for blood work, then to radiology for chest x-ray, then to cardiology for an EKG and Holter and then you'll be done just in time to go to the Opthalmologist in the next town over."  I have all 3 kids with me, baby brother is being his usual mischief monster self, getting into everything and driving me crazy while Miss K is miserable and crying about wanting to play on my phone and big brother is climbing all over the place vying for someone's attention because he's being ignored...**sigh**  I text my mom and asked if she could meet me when she got off work shortly after we left the Pediatrician's office, of course she said "yes", we left the office with a handful of papers and orders, rushed to McDonald's for lunches to go and rushed over to my grandma's house to meet my mom.  Because we live 15 minutes outside of town and the hospital we had to go to is 20 minutes from "town" and Bug's Opthalmoligist appointment was another 20-30 minutes (traffic depending) from the hospital baby brother had to go with me or we wouldn't get him to his appointment.  I humbly asked my mom to tag along and watch baby brother while we did Miss K's stuff, we left big brother with my little sister at my grandma's house, thankfully my grandma was OK to take the two of them home to our house so they wouldn't have to wait around her house all day for us, I can't wait til my sister has her license!

Up first was blood work at the lab.  Miss K screamed the whole time :(, they drew A LOT of blood for the very long list of tests the Pediatrician had ordered.  And then they sent us off to Radiology next door for her chest x-ray, thankfully Miss K handled it pretty well once I promised her the lady wasn't going to touch her she was just going to "take a picture" of her.  Afterwards we had to find a McDonald's for my mom to eat since she hadn't had time to do so before we had to leave (yeah, my crazy occupied mind didn't think to get my sister and mom lunch while I was getting the rest of us food).  Then it was off to Cardiology for her EKG and holter, we got an adorable kid technician, yes he was a kid, really he was barely 21 and somehow that seems so young to me now lol.  He did a great job convincing Miss K that the EKG stickers were cool and that they would "tickle" her.  She decided he was fun to flirt with while he hooked up her holter monitor and wrapped it all up on her chest.  We left there with barely enough time to get to baby brother's appointment.

While at the Opthalmologist baby brother decided he'd had enough of Dr.'s offices.  After getting the eye dilating drops and being sent out of the exam room to wait he went into one of his inconsolable fits in the waiting room.  I tried everything from getting him interested in the toys to bouncing him around, holding him, putting him down, sitting on the floor with him, giving him my phone to play with, finding an interesting app on my phone for him, digging through my diaper bag for a treat of some sort only to find it devoid of anything edible because today I was far from prepared for a full day trip away from home, I was only supposed to be out for an hour tops, I did not predict being gone all day, we were lucky I had emergency diapers tucked away where they wouldn't get used in any other situation!  Nothing was working, I finally had to put him on the floor and let him get it out of his system...this was interrupted by a very rude Dr. in that office who decided to confront me in a moment of weakness.  Suddenly, amidst the screaming and howling from baby brother, I hear "Can't you console your child?!", I seriously thought the guy was teasing me, I've had that happen many times in the past, so I stood up and asked "I'm sorry, what was that?", I'm sorry I even asked.  The Dr. had the nerve to very rudely tell me I needed to console my child, I told him I was trying and he told me it was obvious to him that I was not trying, I wasn't doing anything for him except neglect him and let him scream.  The desk assistants both spoke up on my behalf and told him we had had a very long day of Dr.'s and that my little guy was in pain having his eyes dilated, the Dr. replied that there was no excuse for being the bad mom that I was and that I should be turned in for the way I was treating my son.  I said I was sorry and that I really was doing all that I could, at this point I picked up my little guy who started to calm a bit which made the Dr. think he was completely correct in his assumption and he said "see, he just wanted your love and affection, all you needed to do was pay attention to him and pick him up", I replied that that was not the case, that I had been holding him and trying to cuddle him up to the moment that he (the Dr.) decided to come see what the commotion was, at which point I had barely set him on the floor as he had flopped down to further throw his tantrum unrestrained, the Dr. had the nerve to continue to tell me that I was a bad mom playing on her phone, ignoring her child in need.  I quit trying to explain myself at that point, I just gave up, because how was I supposed to make this ignorant man believe that I was not playing on my phone but rather trying to figure out why the heck it had no service, and panicking because Dr.'s and hospitals and labs were supposed to be calling me at any moment to give me test results and my phone wasn't going to receive the calls leaving me to panic and wonder.  And during that time of "playing" with my phone I was juggling and trying to console my upset child.  The desk assitants were awesome enough to offer me animal crackers to see if he would calm, I graciously accepted as I looked into the Dr.'s eyes and said "because I don't want to listen to him scream either!!!", the assistants filled a small cup for us and baby brother instantly quit screaming to shove his mouth full of cracker, I very graciously thanked the girls and glared at the Dr. then went back to our waiting.  I wish I had more backbone...in fact if I hadn't of been so stressed, so worried, so very tired, that Dr. would have wished he hadn't of ever met me, but instead my stress, worry and exhaustion softened me and instead I just wanted to melt into a puddle of tears.  I wish I at least knew his name so I could call and file a complaint...I don't know if it would do any good anyway though and I'm beat and fed up with that kind of stuff right now.

We finally left the Opthalmolotist to go fill a prescription for baby brother's eyes, turns out he has an infection in them both, though thankfully it's external and there's nothing wrong internally.  We had to pick up my mom's car from my grandma's house so my mom offered me her keys so I could fill the prescription without kids and she drove my car home so the kids could sleep a bit longer.  Not so great was the fact that my phone battery was on it's last leg for the day and I had no phone charger in my mom's car.  I got to the pharmacy to wait 15 minutes and then be told that the Opthalmoloigist had written the prescription wrong and they had put a call in to him.  Then my phone decided to die and I still hadn't heard from any medical personnel!  Very embarrassed I asked the pharmacy techs if one of them had a charger that would fit my phone and if I could please charge it behind the counter, I am so grateful for their kindness, no questions asked they just plugged it in for me then tried to turn it on, when it wouldn't work we waited a few minutes and tried again, luckily it worked, and my prescription was not ready yet so they suggested I leave my phone plugged in until they were done, less than a minute later my phone was ringing with the Pediatrician calling me, I'm so grateful for the pharmacy technicians help or I would have missed that call!  As soon as I was off the phone with the Dr. the prescription was done and my phone died again.

The verdict is:  We have no idea what is going on with Miss K.  Her symptoms this morning have everyone worried, it's definitely a sign that her heart is/was in distress for some reason.  But her x-ray came back normal, her EKG came back normal for her, all her blood results came back normal.  And now we wait for her holter to finish recording and then see what it shows.

The Pediatrician thinks Miss K had an SVT episode through a lot of, or most of, the night and that I found her shortly after coming out of it, he thinks her symptoms were from her heart being tired after SVT.  I'm praying that's all it is because finding out she has something else wrong with her heart is a nightmare of mine.  I'm also hating hearing it could be that, this means she's having SVT again and we need to adjust medications, a sure sign she's not going to kick her PJRT, even though 4 months ago we were told she wasn't going to outgrow it, being completely SVT free is always a great thing, having ANY SVT is never good.

First thing in the morning I'm calling our EP Cardiologist and telling him about Miss K's symptoms, I'm going to get her in to see him in a week or two instead of the end of August when she's supposed to go in for her 6 month check up.  We've got to figure this out.