One Tired Mommy

Last night was awful. Apparently there was not a single open bed in the entire hospital, except on 4 Henson. This means 7 new admits over night, which meant we lost our nurse. She was a good one too, you always hate to lose your favorites! So I think what happened is we didn't technically have a nurse for part of the night and she kept occluding (that means her line is tangled or kinked somewhere and the fluid isn't getting in her body). When that pump starts beeping, I have to get up and silence it, then call the nurses station. Then over the intercom, the secretary says, "yes, can I help you?" (Did I mention it's 1:15 in the morning?) Mind you I'm half asleep but I manage to whisper, "nurse" into the intercom so as not to wake up Chelsea. Seriously though, why else would I be calling them in the middle of the night if it weren't for a nurse? So I fumble my way back to my sofa bed awaiting the nurse, and off goes the pump again. If it doesn't get reset in a certain amount of time, it will start beeping again. So I get up again, silence it and tiptoe back to my bed, praying the nurse arrives soon and Chelsea stays asleep. Once more I had to go through this process before a nurse came, and that's when I realize our nurse is gone. So this nurse resets her pump and leaves again. Sure enough within 20 minutes we start over again. Her line is occluding and I have to buzz them over the intercom again. This time I get another nurse who decides to change the line that the fluids are running into, which was a brilliant idea, b/c it stopped it from occluding. By this time it was 2:15 and I was exhausted. After we got through the occlusions we only had to listen to the pump beep when the 'infusion was complete'. I'm not sure why, but they have to set her pump to go off every two hours. So needless to say it was a long night for me, but believe it or not Chelsea slept through it. Then my little munchkin woke up bright and early!

Something is definately going on with her this morning. I'm not sure who this child is in Chelsea's body, but it's not her. I want my sweet girl back. She has done nothing but protest, grunt and cry at everyone who approaches her today. The nurses and I were guessing that maybe she's just grumpy from the low counts, but I really started watching her and by the time I finished giving her a bath, putting lotion on her and getting her dressed, I noticed that she grunts and gets upset everytime I touch her. That made me think maybe the OT (occupational therapist) would have some suggestions. Just before OT arrived, I put her helmet on her b/c she was being crazy. Just the normal crazy though, crawling onto the recliner and standing up, trying to crawl onto her high chair. Since her platelets are getting low I thought that would be good protection. And would you know she didn't grunt and protest hardly at all in front of the OT? She pointed out that maybe the helmet was helping...it puts slight pressure on her head and it has a calming effect she said. Amazing isn't it? She's still not her normal happy go lucky kind of girl, the helmet isn't a cure all, but between that and her latest dose of oxycodone, it's helping! She has been really very difficult this morning. PT is in here right now working with her, so new toys, new people, she'll be good for a while longer.

Forgot to post yesterdays labs, so in case you were wondering:

WBC - 1.0
HGB - 8.7
PLTS - 102
ANC - 380

Everything is definitely on it's way down, and I would suspect she'll likely need a blood and a platelet transfusion after her labs on Saturday. I suppose it's possible that her hemoglobin has dropped enough that it's causing her grumpiness today. I'll leave you with these:




I'll be glad when we're done with all of this and we don't have to wrap her up like this for every bath!