NotSheep

Jack is in hospital – as mentioned in my previous post, his breathing hasn’t been good all week. This morning it got worse, and he was running a fever and clearly just not well (those who are parents will know just what I mean by that). By noon, he seemed to be getting worse rather than better, so I decided to take him to the Children’s Hospital.

I had to take Louie with me, of course, because I didn’t know how long I’d be gone (a long time, it turned out, so it’s just as well I took him). I took Barney too, because it’s quite hard work keeping a baby entertained on your own in a place like that all day, and he is fantastic with Louie, and also because it meant I could give Jack my full attention when necessary, while knowing that Louie was with someone he knows and loves.

Jack had three nebulisers in succession, with several more after that. He also had a chest x-ray, which looked pretty clear, and so they think it’s a viral infection which has triggered a flare-up of his asthma. He’s also had a dose of oral steroids and two doses of paracetamol, and has anaesthetising cream on his hand and arm in case they want to put a line in, although so far they haven’t. His temperature is down and his sats are looking fairly good even on room air. His air movement still isn’t very good though, which is why he’s now on hourly nebulisers until…well, until things improve. He ate a little at about 5 p.m., then said he was hungry when they took him to the ward about an hour later, and was given a plate of toast – but since I left shortly after 9, he’s thrown up, probably as a consequence of the coughing. Scratchy is there with him now, having driven in to meet me there after George and Freddy finished ju-jitsu.

The nurse Jack had in Casualty all afternoon was one of those no-explanation ones – the kind who seem only to be interested in actually doing medical procedures, rather than communicating with patients (or patients’ parents). She didn’t once offer any information about what she was doing or about to do, never mind ask our permission. But I kept up my routine of getting between her and Jack every time she came in and saying, “What’s this for?” or “What are we doing now?” or “What’s the plan from here?” etc, and then keeping myself between Jack and her until I’d found out the answer, and taken a minute to talk to Jack about it, and by the time he was moved to the ward, she seemed to have begun to realise I was always going to be doing this, although she still didn’t offer any information without me beating it out of her asking first. The doctor, on the other hand, was great about communicating with us – I told her I’d be questioning everything, because this is my kid and he’s my responsibility and the consequences of whatever happens are something I have to live with, and she nodded and said that was the right way to go about it. And the doctor who is on the ward this evening also seems great – when I said that we prefer to avoid meds if they’re not necessary (rather than taking the “throw everything at it just to cover all possibilities” policy that so many here seem to have) he said “Oh, absolutely!” – and he spent time looking at Jack, rather than just at the numbers on the monitor, and watched how he was sitting and moving, paying attention to how he was actually feeling. He chatted with both of us, and even came back after he’d had to go and respond to an urgent page, just to check if we had any more questions. I don’t have a lot of time for doctors who don’t treat their patients as people, and that’s particularly so when the patient is a child – I’m glad we seem to have got lucky this time.

Otherwise – I did not get to fixing my blog after last night’s oh-heck-what-has-this-done Wordpress upgrade, so there will be bits of it that don’t work as expected. I have no idea when I will get around to doing that, because tomorrow will involve going to the hospital at least once as well as taking Barney and maybe George to a barbecue, and meeting/collecting one of George’s friends who has been invited to stay over tomorrow night in the tent in the back garden – except that the tent is not actually up in the back garden, so that’s another thing that needs to be done. And then Sunday is George’s birthday – and I have no idea what our plans are yet.

Also today Barney had an appointment with the optometrist – which he’d have missed if it wasn’t for Google Calendar’s wonderful sms reminders, because I’d completely forgotten about it. His prescription is unchanged, but they told us he could get another pair of glasses for nothing, and with his summer packed as full as it is with camps and various other activities, it seemed a good idea to have a spare pair. He has chosen an absolutely fantastic pair – they bring out the colour of his eyes in an amazing way, and they are by far my favourites of all the glasses he’s ever had. And the insides of the legs on them have a giraffe-print, so Toby is going to be very, very happy (and Barney is going to have to be very, very careful where he leaves them!)

Oh, and before Jack was even out of bed this morning (well, before he was out of my bed, where he’d crashed after getting his inhalers), I had done my treadmill bit. Just as well, really, given that I don’t know when I’ll next get half an hour to do it again.