Mommy By The Book » sick child

I think I’ve found a good excuse to never run on the treadmill again

Rachel — Thu, 19 May 2011 20:29:09 +0000

My cute girl with two functioning, non-mangled hands

So, do you want the good news or the bad news first? Bad news? Ok then, glad we agree.

Two weeks ago the husband was running on the treadmill in the basement while our daughter played and watched cartoons in the same room. We’ve had this set-up for a while, we’ve had conversations about never ever ever touching the treadmill while it is on, and all has gone smoothly. You can see where this is going. For some inexplicable reason my little girl decided to wander on over and stick her sweet, soft, innocent little hand under the moving treadmill belt and IT GOT STUCK.

My husband called me at work, in a panic because Claire was completely freaking out and would not stop screaming, even to the point of throwing up. I was trapped, having joined a carpool (which is a post in itself) the week before. From what I could gather there was very little blood, but a lot of skin had been taken off and my poor girl was miserable. There wasn’t anything that looked like it needed to be stitched up, even though her hand was quite mangled, so we didn’t go to the ER. It looked like what it needed was some good old fashioned antibacterial ointment, some time to heal, and some major TLC. That day (and the next few as well) that girl got whatever she wanted in our desperate attempt to bring her any sort of comfort and happiness. Watch movies all day? Sure! You want popsicles for dinner? You got it! Here, have some chocolate too!!

The following days were downright heartbreaking and completely stressful for all of us. Her hand had to be bandaged and protected. The first night I loosely taped some gauze to her hand, slathering it all with antibacterial ointment. The next morning, to my horror, the gauze had dried to her oozing, open wounds. We had to try to force her hand underwater per her doctor’s suggestion (which is painful on such sensitive wounds) and then yank the gauze off. Just typing that sentence makes me ill all over again. I’m sure I don’t even need to describe the howling on my daughter’s part. I raced to the nearest pharmacy in a frenzy, sweeping into my basket non-stick gauze and antibacterial sprays and band-aids with cartoon characters on them and anything else that looked remotely helpful.

In an effort to protect her damaged hand, my girl would keep it in a fist and wouldn’t let anyone or anything near it. While I praised her basic survival instincts and tenacity at keeping us from touching it, that hand absolutely had to be tended to in order to prevent infection and ensure proper healing. Even in her sleep, if I would try to touch her hand to adjust the bandages she would quickly jerk it away. Changing the bandages became a 3-man job that I would dread for over an hour before the appointed time to make it happen with the assistance of one of her grandmothers. Grandma would hold her tightly in her lap, while my husband gingerly pried her shredded fingers open and I sprayed and bandaged and taped as quickly as my inexperienced hands would allow. Claire made sure to fulfill her role in this as well and would scream and thrash as much as she possibly could. Each bandaging session left me feeling guilty for causing her pain, frazzled, and beyond anxious. Luckily, after several days this process was downgraded from a 3-man job to a 2-man operation and now, finally, is one-woman gig. (Lucky me).

Things looked like they were making slow but steady progress on most of her hand, but her 4th finger (the ring finger on her left hand, no less) just is not keeping up. That poor finger got the worst of the damage, it seems, and has had great difficulty healing. For almost a week I couldn’t even get a good look at it because she would not open her hand for anything, and when we’d force her hand open all the thrashing about prevented me from seeing much. A few days ago she FINALLY started opening her hand on command, even patiently allowing me to bandage her up with only minor whimpering, and one part of her finger is still all gooey and oozy and fleshy and mangled and just…awful. On Monday she began acting lethargic and feverish, and I panicked thinking infection had set in at last and called the doctor.

Fortunately, the doctor didn’t seem as panicked as I felt and offered some good advice and prescribed an antibiotic to stave of what looked to be just the beginnings of a bacterial infection. He did say, though, that while it looked like tissue was regenerating in the deepest part of the wound, it appeared there was still dead tissue stuck in there that needed to come out. I’m pretty sure I lost all color at that point, because he quickly assured me I wouldn’t have to scrub it, for heavens sake, but we still would need to care for it. He suggested wrapping it in regular gauze as opposed to the non-stick kind, allowing it to dry and stick to the wound, soaking it in water and then taking it off in an effort to remove the dead tissue with it. My stomach immediately knotted up and I wanted to positively beg him to take my daughter home with him for the next 3 days so he could take care of it, because I was done. I could NOT intentionally cause my daughter any more pain. No no no no no.

The unfortunate thing about being a parent is that you cannot simply drop your child off with someone else when the tough stuff happens. You now must be the hero. I remember reading an article once in my pre-child days where the writer described his young child dealing with some sort of worm/parasite thing? And for weeks when they changed a diaper, they had to search for the appearance of said worm emerging from his child’s bowels, and then pull the worm the rest of the way out. (I really hope you aren’t eating right now.) As the author described it: “it’s a damn horror show.” That’s pretty much what played through my head and provided some tiny bit of comfort as I drove home from the pediatrician. I may have to rip tissue out of my sweet daughter’s hand, but at least I’m not pulling a worm from her butt.

That night, as I placed regular gauze on her hand I couldn’t help but shed a few tears. My dear girl had been so brave, so long-suffering and upbeat through this whole ordeal and still had a ways to go. I was so proud of her. How could I possibly inflict more pain on her?

Happily, this gauze treatment has been relatively smooth sailing. We have to get pretty creative with ways to get her hand wet, since she still doesn’t like doing that, but she has tolerated the bandage changing like a true gem and it looks like we’re making progress. Hopefully a couple more weeks and everything will be back to normal.

So, let’s recap what we’ve learned here:

1. Treadmills and young children do not mix. AT ALL.

2. Don’t put regular gauze on an open and oozing wound immediately after it happening unless you want to make the situation 100 times worse.

3. Dora The Explorer band-aids, in fact, DO make the owie feel a little better. So do popsicles.

4. Being a kid is tough. Being a parent is tough. But we’re all stronger than we think we are.

As for the good news…well, this post is long enough, don’t you think? That will have to wait for another day

I’m still here…

Rachel — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 05:01:19 +0000

…just went MIA this last week. Got home from the business trip after a long, loooooonnng day and completely crashed the next day. However, I had to quickly get my act together because my poor little girl, who hadn’t managed to fully recover from her previous illness came down with an even worse virus. By Monday, she was so miserable and coughing so hard that the blood vessels around her eyes had burst and she had little purple splotches covering her eyelids and around her eye sockets. By that night, she was coughing until she would throw up and just the saddest thing you’ve ever seen. I’ll spare you the rest of the heartbreaking details, but before the night was over we were all in tears.

I don’t know how some parents do it. We were crying over seeing our daughter sick with a bad chest cold. How do parents handle having a child with a chronic or serious illness? When I was 10 years old I became seriously ill with a mysterious bacterial infection in my intestines and was hospitalized for a week after being terribly sick for almost a month. My parents cried pretty much that whole week. Now I understand why. There may be nothing more mentally, physically, and emotionally draining as seeing your child suffer and feeling so helpless. I admire so much the families who deal with that kind of stress on a regular basis.

Happily, the little one is on the mend. That awful Monday night she received a priesthood blessing from her father and slept well. The next morning she was still sick, but vastly improved and is almost back to her regular self.

So in short, this week we’ve been in survival mode- trying to find a way to tend to our sick child while still magically fulfilling our obligations at school and work. It’s in these times that I long for the simpler days that will hopefully come in the not-too-distant future. Until then I’ll just appreciate the fact that we are all healthy and whole, and while life is crazy at times, it is still a good one

A rather sad little post. You’ve been warned…

Rachel — Fri, 07 May 2010 22:55:34 +0000

I attempted to sit down on Tuesday and write a post, but I was literally too sleep deprived to even put two coherent words together.

I tried again on Thursday, but I suppose I was still too exhausted and burned out that I could hardly keep myself from banging my head on the keyboard and then falling asleep.

I guess what I’m saying is, it’s been a rough week.

Since the broccoli barf incident, things went steadily downhill until we reached the point where Claire was vomiting 10+ times a day from coughing so hard, lethargic, burning hot, and just the saddest little girl you’ve ever seen. I thought my heart couldn’t break any more, until another puking episode required yet another bath. As I set her down next to the bath to take off her onsie and diaper, her little legs were visibly shaking from being so weak and tears ran down her chubby cheeks. I tried valiantly to fight back the tears myself, but my heart just couldn’t take it anymore. Truly, there is nothing worse than seeing your child in pain or discomfort and not being able to do a single thing about it.

On Sunday we went to the Urgent Care to see if we could get Claire back on the road to recovery, where they took chest x-rays and gave her injections of antibiotics and all sorts of other torturous things, only to discover a couple days later from her regular pediatrician that she was MISDIAGNOSED (AARGH!) and I now have a several hundred dollar medical bill coming my way and my little girl did not get any better.

So in the midst of all the not sleeping and barf cleaning and soothing and fretting and whatnot, Brady’s body decides the sinus/cough thing he had been fighting for a while just wasn’t enough. On Tuesday night he suddenly started experiencing extreme pain in one of his ears, to the point where he was almost in tears. After a few agonizing hours he felt a pop, some relief, and fluid began draining out. I sent him to the doctor the next day and sure enough, he had an ear infection. Later that night, the other ear did the same thing. You should see his pillow after having fluid draining from both ears all night. In fact, I could probably post a picture…what? No? That’s gross? Well, that’s no fun. So anyway, the man can’t hear much but is on the mend at least.

Add to the mix some stressful changes at work, and then summer semester starting for both of us yesterday!

WHEEEE!!!

How’s your week been? Better, I hope!