I may as well move in...

It's a long story, grab a cup of coffee first :)

The boys have been really congested lately and I thought, "Oh! The boys' first little cold!"...little did I know...

Sunday morning when my mom got the boys up Ben was running a little bit of a temp. Nothing too concerning, 99.9, but something to keep an eye on. By Monday night he was so congested he could hardly breath and his temp was up to 100.8. Aiden was congested too so we decided that we should call the after hours line of our family doctor. He made the suggestion that we take them in just because they are so young, so we did.

When we got to the ER they put us in rooms across the hall from each other and then decided that since Ben was running a temp they had to do a full septic workup on him meaning blood, urine, IV, chest xray, and spinal tap and since Aiden wasn't running a temp they did everything except the spinal tap. My poor little boys. It took them 5 tries to get the IV in Ben, but finally there was success. Then came the spinal tap. Luckily they kicked me out of the room for that one so I didn't have to see it. I went across the hall to hold Aiden's hand for his IV and pretended that I couldn't hear Ben screaming. They came back about 20 minutes later and said that the first tap failed and the second was a "traumatic tap" which means that there was blood in the sample. They wanted to admit him so that they could try again when they got upstairs. Aiden's IV took 2 tries and he was going to stay in the ER for a while to see what happened. So I took Ben and went upstairs while Pat stayed with Aiden downstairs. Once again, two children, two seperate floors of the hospital.

Ben and I got upstairs and they did the medical history and shortly after they were finished, Pat came in with Aiden. They had deemed Aiden's illness as virual and sent him home. For Ben's next spinal they sent him to a procedure room down the hall and around the corner from his room. I could still hear him screaming. They brought him back and said that they couldn't get anything from him and that they had tried twiced (if you are keeping track that is 4 lumbar punctures). They said that they were going to try to get the culture from the two little bloody drops that they got downstairs.

The next morning Ann came and picked up Aiden and Pat went home to take care of the dogs and I stayed with Ben. When the nurse came in to do his vitals she got a phone call and from what I could understand they were talking about Ben and his spinal. The nurse flips him over and looks at his back and says into the phone "I count five, possibly six sites where they tried to get a sample."...wait...they told us about 4...the nurse said that they were just doing some investigating and left it at that.

To make a really long story much shorter, the doctor came in later that afternoon and said "umm...it seems as though we lost the spinal fluid sample that we got from Ben and we need to take another one." So now there are a couple of tries that they failed to tell us about AND they have lost the small amount that they managed to get. After a LOT of debating and arguing, we agreed to let them take another sample, which was successful.

Fast forward a day and a half and several heartfelt apologies later to Wednesday night. We knew that we would be there for a little while longer because Ben had to stay for a full 48 hours after the culture was taken, just to see if something showed up. So we are sitting, watching TV and my phone rings. Its Ann. She says, "I couldn't wake Aiden up to eat and I just took his tempurature and he is running a fever". Well hell. Bring him in.

By the time we got Aiden in to the emergency room he was lathargic and running a temp of 102.4. Aparently he missed his brother, double room here we come. Sure enough, they are going to admit him. This time it took them 5 tries to get the IV in Aiden, so I said that there was no way I was letting them do the spinal tap until he had been on IV liquids for several hours. They agreed and we moved upstairs.

Aiden's spinal was a lot more successful than Ben's and the rest of the stay was pretty uneventful. Both boys have a Urinary Tract Infection and some sort of virus but they got to come home today!

I am thinking of just having my mail forwarded to the hospital because we can't seem to stay away...