Primary Children's Hospital Adventure

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of craziness that started with this "little" two day episode. This is an incredibly long story, proceed with caution!

On August 6th, I took hubby to work (we only have one car) and then headed to WinCo to do my weekly grocery shopping. While I was browsing through the bulk section, I happened to look down at Paige in her carseat up on the front of the cart, and noticed she was bluish in color. Thinking that it was just the carseat straps, I undid the straps and waited a minute to see what would happen. Nothing. Then, I quickly pulled her up and held her flat in my arms and her color changed.

I didn't panic, I just sort of figured she was uncomfortable, but I did keep a closer eye on her and then went to check out. At the check out stand, I realized I didn't have my wallet (I'd moved it to my purse from the diaper bag when hubby and I went out to dinner a couple days before). I did have my checkbook, but you have to have a legal id to use it. The cashier got all my stuff checked and then tried to convince customer service to accept it, but they wouldn't. I was told to bag all my groceries (two weeks worth) and leave them at customer service and come back when I could pay for them. So, being at the store's mercy, I bagged my groceries, but started to cry. Blame it on sleep deprivation or hormones or whatever, but I totally started crying over my grocery bags. When I dropped off my cart with the store clerk, I had tears running down my cheeks and she gave me a very sympathetic look and told me it would be ok. I then had to carry my baby out to the car in her car seat, something I wasn't supposed to be doing yet due to my weight carrying restrictions, which made me cry harder. Grocery shopping at this point was still really hard for me to do since the abs are used a lot to push a cart, and by this point, I was physically done and hurting. I did the only thing I could think  of doing at this point-- I called the hubby at work.

He was kind about my not having money with me and didn't laugh (which is very nice since I was totally crying hysterically!) and then when he found out the baby turned blue, he freaked. He called the pediatrician and got us arranged to go in to have Paige checked out and he left work to be with me. When we got to the pediatrician we saw an associate of the Dr we saw the Friday before. She decided that since Paige's file talked about her head being misshapen and with the turning blue, we needed to go immediately to Primary Children's Hospital. WHAT?! She didn't feel comfortable keeping us at the office and sent us to the ER right away. So, we drove up to the hospital and got checked in.

We were checked in and then we sat in an ER room for about 3 hours while they ran some basic tests and called the pediatrician to try and decide what they should do.

 Finally, it was decided to keep us so they could observe the baby for 24 hours to see if another turning blue episode happened. Hubby had to go back to work, so I walked Paige up to her room and got her settled to wait and wait.

Since we were there just to observe her oxygen levels and heart rate, there wasn't a ton to do, except watch Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.  An speech therapist came in at one point to watch Paige nurse. (Talk about awkward. She kept a stethoscope on P while she ate!) She discovered that Paige does have a weak larynx (just like the pediatrician had suggested the week previous) called Laryngomalacia and it flops closed making breathing hard or impossible for a moment. P has a coping strategy: she makes a honking sound to open it back up.

When the baby finally fell asleep, I sneaked out to get some food downstairs and passed through this hallway:

Mike came back up to the hospital after work and informed me that he'd that his grandma was in the ICU at Intermountain Medical Center because she had torn her aorta and blood was pooing behind her heart. His mom was coming back into town the next day and everyone was coming up to say goodbye because the prognosis was fatal-- it was just a matter of time. With this news, we got through the night waking up when the nurses came while scrunched on the little couch.

Paige's stats the whole time we were there

After an uneventful night, followed by sitting around waiting for the doctors to do their morning rounds, and finally, the doctors' visit we were given a list of things to do before we could go home.

Our check out list

We got the car seat test done-- P sitting in a carseat for 1.5 hours watching her oxygen levels. We were afraid she'd freak out or cry and we'd have to start all over, but instead she just slept until her time was up.

 As soon as the car seat time was up, around 1pm, we go into the x-ray lab where we had to hold the baby still so they could get pictures of her chest. She was so patient and just looked around until they were done,

 After this test, our checkout list was done (around 2pm) and we sat around waiting for permission to leave. We sat and sat and sat and kept bugging the nurses to let us go. Around 3:30, the chief intern doctor came in and told us she was going to sign our release papers and get us home. But, then, around 4:30, the head doctor, his associate, the resident working with us, and the main intern all came back in. Not a good sign. We were informed that there was a spot on the x-ray that concerned them and they didn't feel good about sending us home without having an ultrasound of the heart. They found that there was blood mixing in her chest and wanted to see more clearly what was going on. Great. Since the ultrasound office was closing done at 5, they rushed the order to get us in, and we got down there about 5:05pm. We apologized to the technician for keeping her longer and then we settle in to see how our baby's heart worked. She had to keep almost perfectly still, so the technician kept up supplied with sugar water to drip into a pacifier to keep her still.

waiting to make sure the ultrasound worked

 We finished around 5:30 and then headed back up to our room to await diagnosis or the edict we had to stay another night. Around 6:45 the main intern doctor girl came back in to tell us that Paige has two holes in her heart; she drew up a picture since we don't have medical training.

the horizontal lines show where the holes are

Basically, she has a hole in the upper chamber and one in the lower. Both are supposed to close by the time she's one. One of pretty common (I don't remember which) and the other is less common but we were assured, nothing to be overly worried about. After all this, we were sent home with orders to check in with the pediatrician so he knows what to look for.

This experience made me very grateful I have a healthy baby and I am fortunate to not have to live in the hospital with a sick child.