A night in ICU

Tuesday 21 February.

After a very long 6 days in traction at the hopsital CG has finally had made it to Tuesday and has had his hip spica cast put on under anesthetic. They had to put him under because its a long process and the need to manipulate his sore leg. They needed him to be still and with a toddler in pain the only way to do this is to put them to sleep.

He had been on a lot of medicine for his allergic rhinitis and post nasal drip during the week because he lost his voice the first night from crying and when it didn't come back we asked a paedatrician to take a look at him. He even ended up on an antibiotic for the beginnings of an ear infection. Basically lying on your back all day is no good for a child with a tendency for mucus and post nasal drip.

After a very long 6 days in traction at the hopsital CG has finally had made it to Tuesday and has had his hip spica cast put on under anesthetic. They had to put him under because its a long process and the need to manipulate his sore leg. They needed him to be still and with a toddler in pain the only way to do this is to put them to sleep.

He had been on a lot of medicine for his allergic rhinitis and post nasal drip during the week. He lost his voice the first night from crying and when it didn't come back we asked a paedatrician to take a look at him. He even ended up on an antibiotic for the beginnings of an ear infection and a bunch of other stuff. Basically lying on your back all day is no good for a child with a tendency for mucus and post nasal drip.

At the end of the anestetic, as they were waking him up, some phlem in his throat made his body spasm and his upper airway closed. The anethatist chatted to me in the recovery area and told me what happened. She was very careful to explain that he responded immediately to the medication they gave him to open his airway and that this does happen in little ones with post nasal drip. However the paediatrician decided that we needed to play it safe and keep Curious George under observation for the night just incase. As he put it 'if his airway closes again we only have 4min to get to him' and in the normal ward this would be difficult.

I have to admit that I was more worried about the fact that they wouldn't let me stay the night with him. We've never actually spent a night apart and he had been very clingy (understandably so) since our stay in the hospital. I didn't want him waking up in the middle of the night in another strange place all alone, disorienteated and scared. But they agreed that I could stay the night in his paed room and visit him as many times as I wanted to.

His was still quite out of it from the anesthetic when they transferred him and the paedeatrician asked us to leave so that the nurses could get him set up with a drip etc. That was really tough, I knew he wouldn't like that and he looked so small and vulnerable in the ICU ward. But we went back to his room in the paed ward and prayed for him. We went back after the allotted time to disciver that he had really fought them when they tried to put the drip in and now that had given him a boxing glove bandage on his other hand so he wouldn't pull the drip out. Poor little guy.

I was feeling very shaken by now but the nurses in the ICU were wonderful. They talked to us about all his needs in the cast, they calmed our nerves and told us they completely understood that we wanted to stay with him but that it was against the rules. They promised to keep him pain free and on a mild sedative so he would sleep properly for the first time in a week. So after he'd had all his meds and he'd drifted off to sleep I went back an slept in his room in the paed ward, with the promise that I could visit him at any point during the nigh.

I visited him around 2am to discover that his night in ICU was a blessing in disguise because he had had a rough night but as he had his own nurse for the night she had been able to take wonderful care of him. He had had a very high temp ( a result of the anesthetic apparently), he'd vomited a bit and had needed a number of nappy changes. When I got there his temp. was under control and he was peaceful again.

So in the end I have to say that it was a real blessing because I was so exhausted from the hospital stay at this point that I would never have managed all of that in the paed ward alone. God is good even though his ways don't always make sense at first. I mostly decent night of sleep for the first time in a week and Curious George got the best post op care he could have received.

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