Notes From a Hospital Room at 3am

Jamie and Lynn Spears were not the only ones who had to hustle their daughter off to the hospital this week. But whether fortunately or unfortunately, a mental breakdown is not the reason that a room in the pediatric ward at St. Joe’s has become our second home.
Last Saturday, The Button began complaining that her stomach hurt. With a flu bug going around, I didn’t think much about it. I kept her quiet at home, commiserated with a friend who is a nurse, and figured we’d get her into the pediatrician on Monday if it hadn’t cleared up by then. The biggest concern was that Sunday night she missed the much-anticipated AIDS relief dance open to all the high school students in town.

But on Monday morning, when it came time head to Dr. Dumont’s, The Button told me “Mom, my right side and leg hurt too bad – I don’t think I can walk.” Uh oh. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to call 911, and certainly never for an ambulance. When Craig and Jenny the EMTs arrived, we went through all the expected questions until they got to “has she had her appendix out?” When I replied no, Craig gave Jenny and me the look over the top of The Button's head . “Okay,” he said, “time to get her in the truck.”

Once in the pediatric emergency ward at St. Joe’s, we waited a couple hours for a CT scan. “If she were a boy, we’d send her straight into surgery,” Dr. Patal explained, “but since she’s a girl, there’s too much plumbing down there, so we need to eliminate other possibilities before we go poking around.” They gave The Button some pain meds, but right before wheeling her in for the scan, her temperature went from 98 degrees to almost 103.

“Her appendix has ruptured,” Dr. Polley, the chief pediatric surgeon, told us. “In the old days, we would have operated and there would have been a pretty high likelihood of complications, “ he continued. “But today, because antibiotics are so strong, we flood her with those, get the infection cleared up, and then bring her back in six to eight weeks to take it out.”

“She’s not in any danger, but don’t let me kid you. You guys are going to be here for a while.”

So here we are. Days 1, 2, and 3 on the third floor of the new patient tower at St. Joe’s were quite simply frightening. Tubes and IVs everywhere, and the toxic -looking green goop coming out of her stomach via an NG tube would make Rambo blanche. We kept having bad luck with the NG tube, but the nurses told us they’d never had a patient – adult or child – who handled insertions so stoically. But at one point on Wednesday, as I sat at her bedside holding her hand, big tears welled up in The Button’s eyes and spilled down, puddling around the tape and tubing. “Mom,” she cried, “I just want to go home.”

As we progressed through Day 4, she was pain and fever free, though still very weak and with that awful stuff pumping out of her tummy. And her Dad and I were becoming more accustomed to the rhythms of the ward. “The Tour Group” is Dr. Polley’s staff of doctors who roll through every morning around 7am. Nurse Lynn, his chief nurse, stops by later, insisting each visit that she normally accompanies the doctor on his rounds but that this time they somehow got separated. Dr. Polley comes in around lunch time, and we have experienced first-hand the hospital Murphy’s Law that if you leave to go to the bathroom, that’s when the doctor will show up.

We’ve also worked our way through several rotations of nurses, and I’m sure it’s no surprise that these ladies are our heroes. We’re getting to know some of them a bit – Margot is experienced and motherly, Marcia is no-nonsense but allows a quirky sense of humor to peak out occasionally, Amy (above right) talks a blue streak, and Jenny is quiet and compassionate through the overnight shifts.

And now it’s dawn on the morning of Day 6 and we have had two good nights in a row, a real blessing. Over the past two days members of “The Posse,” The Button’s school friends, have been visiting and some of the tubes are starting to come out – huge morale boosters. She has also started reading, another good sign. I feel like we’ve turned a corner, and can envision a day in the next week or so when she will leave this place a relatively happy, healthy young girl with two extremely relieved parents in tow.

Mr. And Mrs. Spears should be so lucky.