"A" is for Adventure!

It's also for "accident" (not us), "ambulance" (us), "Amelia" (who else) and "A-mergency room" (k, that's a stretch I know).

*** Don't worry everything's fine. Just normal childhood illness, but I'll get to that in a minute. ***

Note: This post was started two weeks ago...so the time line is a little off.

So, we got back into town Sunday evening. Amelia slept or almost slept most of the trip. I didn't think much of it as she (and we) didn't get a lot of sleep the night before. (She seems to know just when it would be best for everyone to have a good night's sleep, and this makes her very agitated... so much so that she wakes up and cries, squirms and fusses thus keeping everyone up. Caves under the pressure I guess.)

I also didn't think too much of it when she felt warm at the rest stop. I assumed that the air conditioning wasn't high enough in the car. So I cranked it up for the rest of the drive.

When we got home, there was no mistaking it however. Amelia had a fever. It was high...104ish.

So I ran a lukewarm bath, gave her Tylenol and watched her. Till about 11. When the fever was back in the low/normal range, I got her to sleep.

Monday, no fever she was acting fine all day. Maybe a little tired, but fine. Until Monday night right around 10:30, when Jim called me as I was coming out of the grocery store (yes, late I know). Amelia had woken up and was crying and saying something over and over. I tried to get her to tell me what was wrong over the phone. The only thing I understood was "hurt." And there was something weird in her tone.

I assumed the fever had come back and I had Jim get her an ice pop. When I came in she was eating the pop and watching Barney. But when the ice pop was gone, she started to cry and then was breathing strangely, in short gasps as though it hurt to take deeper breaths. I tried to get her to nurse, but she wouldn't. She was also sitting very stiffly and her stomach was tense and hard.

So I had Jim call the pediatrician. When he heard her symptoms, he told us to go to CHOP. This made us more afraid that it really was something serious. We got Jim's mom to come and stay with Maria, who was still sound asleep and unaware of what was going on.

When we had just gotten on the expressway, we saw traffic stopped dead in front of us. With all the rescue vehicles, we knew something serious had happened. I was just contemplating driving up the shoulder to the next exit when three cars shot up the shoulder and blocked us in.

Amelia was awake again, now that the car wasn't moving, and starting to fuss. I rolled down my window and tried to reason with the man in the car next to us, asking him not to move any farther forward to block us in. I told him we were trying to get to the hospital with my daughter.

He just said, "It's not my fault, I didn't cause this," and rolled up his window. Argh.

So I called 911, to see if they could send a cop to help us get out of the jam, or to at least tell us how long a wait it would be. The man I spoke with recommended that I get an ambulance, as it would be "quite awhile" before we'd be moving again.

So Jim and I got out to flag down the ambulance. Rescue workers from the accident scene ahead of us came back to see what was going on, and help the other ambulance find us. They asked a few questions and stayed with us till the ambulance arrived. Then the helped me climb over the barrier between the East and West bound lanes.

We decided to go to a closed hospital now that the fastest way to CHOP was blocked, and thankfully someone told Jim, who had to stay with the car, where we were going.

In the ambulance the EMT put leads on Amelia to monitor her hear and other things, and dangled a oxygen mask near her face to help her out a little, though he said her "oxygen saturation" was good.

When we got to the hospital, Amelia started screaming again, having fallen partly asleep in the ambulance. When the nurses checked her temp it was up to 103. They gave her some tylenol and we sat down to wait for the doctor.

I was quite surprised when Jim showed up about 20 minutes after we did. After giving him an update on Amelia, I got the story of how he made it to the hospital so quickly. Apparently, a state trooper told him to turn the car around and go, saying, "If anyone says anything to you, tell that that Trooper Scott said it was ok." So Jim wove in and out of the parked cars on the expressway, until he got to the entrance ramp, where cars were still getting on (and blinking there lights at the crazy person going the wrong way), where he drove on the shoulder and finally turned onto another road, finally going the right direction again.

I am very glad that I wasn't in the car while he was pulling that maneuver. But I was also very glad that he had made it to the hospital.

After waiting a little longer, the doctor came in and assured us that this most likely wasn't appendicitis, which is what we had feared. He ordered a blood test and a urine sample, which he was going to have a nurse get with a catheter. Yuck. I was clear-headed enough to ask if maybe we could try to have Amelia pee in a cup to get the sample rather than do a catheter. He said that it's been his experience that it wouldn't work with a kid her age, but he was willing to let us try.

Amelia did very well with it and was able to provide a nice sample for them. She also did beautifully when they put the IV in to take the blood sample. I think she was too tired and loopy at that point to protest much, but still she did very well, with no crying at all.

After the tests came back, and after they'd given her some fluids via the IV, we left thinking that all this adventure was caused by a virus.

But two days later, the culture showed that she had a UTI. So she was put on an antibiotic. Which we've since learned, through and all over body rash, that she's allergic too. So now we have a second antibiotic and are facing some follow-up testing at CHOP to rule out something called urinary reflux.

All of this shows that you don't have to go looking for adventure... when you're a parent the adventure comes to you.