Hospital: Day 1

Our original plan was to wake up Tuesday morning, take Levi downtown for his monthly appointment at Children's (which just so happened to be scheduled for that same morning), bring him home, then turn around and take Charlie back to be admitted.  Now everything was off.  I was taking the morning off of work since I already had a sub and was going to take Levi to his appointment.  Judson was feeding Charlie a large breakfast "just in case" and then going to take her to school.  While heading in for the appointment the office manager called with the quote.  Apparently the cost of the test was only $253.  She asked if we wanted to go ahead with it, especially since they were able to get us back on the schedule.  I laughed out loud and said, "For $253?  Um, yeah!"  She then gave me the details, which were that we couldn't be admitted that day and that it would be pushed back to Wednesday.  The doctor would go over everything when I came in with Levi.  I quickly hung up, called Judson, etc.  We were on!

Meanwhile, I had apparently missed another call from the hospital in my mad phone call making.  It was the doctor asking us to bring Charlie in right away.  Of course I was already half way there, in rush hour traffic, and was barely going to be able to make her appointment.  I called Judson back and had him quickly put Charlie in the car to race down there.   The doctor came in to see Levi immediately so Judson was unable to make it in time.  To be honest, I don't even know what we discussed about Levi, it all happened so fast!  She went over what would happen with Charlie over the next few days which was not going to be pleasant.  Insurance was still denying two nights of her hospital stay so they were going to have to do part of the procedure as an outpatient.  We were bringing her in to place the NG tube so that we could take her home and administer the medication for the next day ourselves.

When Charlie and Judson got there the nurse took ALL of us back (including Levi).  Although ideally we would never want Levi to be there for this there was no other option.  I spoke with him about what he was going to see and got out the iPad and turned it up as loud as we could to distract him.  I assured him that Charlie was not going to be in pain that she was just crying because she was a bit scared.  I think he was more curious than anything.  It took several of us to hold her down while they placed the NG tube down her nose and into her stomach.  We then got instructions for how to pull and test stomach juices, flush the tube, and administer the medication, all of which needed to be done every hour until she could be admitted the next morning.

We left there terrified and feeling like maybe we were making the wrong decision.  Before we walked out we checked on how much it would cost to pay out of pocket to stay the night.  We decided to save the thousands of dollars and try to make it work.  Every hour when we would sit there through the thirty minute process, holding her while she was screaming in fear and pain, we would discuss that if we could make it maybe we could use the money that we were "saving" for a vacation.  Luckily, my stepdad and mom came over and played with Levi, helped to hold Charlie, ordered dinner, etc.

Our first major set back came when the medicine was stopping in her stomach and causing it to be distended.  It wasn't going anywhere and she was rock hard.  She also was not "emptying" which was the whole point of this process.  We called the nurses who had us take a break from the meds for an hour which provided some relief.  That night was one of the worst night's "sleep" in a while.  We were all exhausted by the morning.  Charlie hadn't eaten anything solid for 24 hours and she was definitely not feeling well.  Now we got to sit around, continue the meds through the NG tube, and wait for the phone call to bring her in to be admitted.