The "Toothbrush " Incident...

This kid is going to do me in! Not too long after we were done with the broken arm, Luke landed himself in the ER again, but this time he really hit it out of the park! This all happened back in May - Tues the 17th...I was in the bathroom the getting ready, when I heard Luke's "I'm hurt" cry. Came out to find that Noah had given Luke a little shove and his mouth was bleeding. I figured he's bit his tongue, but could never find the source of the blood. The bleeding stopped pretty quickly though, and he seemed ok, so I finished getting ready and we headed out the door to run some errands. Before too long however, I could tell something was off. Luke was still upset, wouldn't drink, and now was drooling and looked like this:

Yeah - not my usually smiley little Luke! So I called our pediatrician and headed to her office. After taking a look, she could see a laceration in the back of his throat. I then remembered that my toothbrush obsessed little guy had been brushing his teeth around that time. Hmmm..... The wound didn't look bad though, so she gave Luke some Tylenol, and we headed home (where I found the offending toothbrush on the floor). A few minutes after we got home, the phone rang and it was the pediatrician. She didn't feel settled about Luke's situation and ended up consulting with some ENT friends at Medical City Hospital. She wanted us to take him to the ER there. Ugh. So I called Wade, told him to head home and off we went to the ER at Medical City. So here we are in the ER Tuesday night:

Luke was still not eating, drooling like crazy, running a low grade fever and was pretty swollen on one side of his neck. The ER doc kind of blew us off until we convinced him to consult with the ENT the pediatrician had talked to. They decided it was time for a CT scan! The CT showed some internal bleeding. The ER doc suddenly changed his tune and had us admitted to the PICU at about 2 am.

We spent the night in the PICU while the docs there tried to decide what they wanted to do. We needed to find out if he was still bleeding, but the best way of doing that was under debate because there was risk of clots, strokes, aneurysms...minor stuff like that! Finally, they sent Luke's CT scan to a Dr. Rollins - who is an uber-specialist in pediatric angiography and interventional radiology. Apparently, she saw enough concern to advise the doctors to transfer us to Children's Medical Center where she could see Luke. They wouldn't let us drive him the 3 miles ourselves, so Luke took his first trip in an ambulance, and was NOT happy about it (neither am I now that we've found out our insurance isn't going to cover much of the $5000 bill)!

So we made it to Children's PICU the afternoon of the Wednesday the 18th, where we started talking to doctors who all seemed to be a little annoyed that we were there - basically said the Medical City docs were idiots and we were too for being so concerned! I was getting really ticked off and was really confused at why the doctors at Medical City were so much more concerned that the doctors here! Finally, we found one doctor who listened long enough for us to explain that we were sent here to see Dr. Rollins - that she had seen Luke's CT scan and wanted him transferred here. We had assumed that they knew all this - that the doctors at both hospitals had communicated. We were wrong! Realizing Dr. Rollins was involved pulled the docs out of their "know-it-all" attitude. They started putting all the pieces together and stopped treating us like idiots. I still am completely dumbfounded how in a world of instant communication, this could have happened. How many mistakes have been made this way!!!?? Anyway, we spent about 24 hours in the PICU at Children's until they felt like he was improving enough that active bleeding was no longer a concern and they moved us to the trauma floor Thursday at about noon. Now the worry was that, though he wasn't necessarily bleeding, there might be damage to blood vessels. Vessel damage could result in thrown clots or ruptures which could cause an aneurysm or stroke. Unfortunately, Dr. Rollins was not going to be available until Friday, so we had another 24 hours to kill with Luke, who by this time was acting pretty normal and was really sick of being stuck in a crib hooked up to monitors and IVs. We convinced the nurses to let us take him out for awhile. We tried first to just take a walk, but we couldn't keep up with him and were afraid he'd pull out the IV! We decided the wagon was safer.

Finally, Friday was here and the decision had been made to do an angiogram to check for vessel damage. That, of course, meant putting him out and handing him over to strangers - not a fan! But everything went great, the angio came back clean, and here is our baby boy in recovery:

Trying to wake up and wanting "Daddy". He became really attached to Wade at the hospital which was really cute to watch.

So, everything was good! Besides a bacterial infection from the puncture wound, we were good to go! We made it out by about 8pm Friday night - antibiotics in hand and instructions to watch for unlikely symptoms: fevers above 102, swelling, more drooling , etc. Yay!

OR NOT! By the next morning, Luke's fever had spiked, the side of his neck with the puncture was swelling again, he was swimming in drool again, and was just not good. After a call to the pediatrician, she called the Hospital and told them we were headed back. They had us come to the ER, where we figured we'd be fast tracked back to the docs that knew his situation so we could get things taken care of. WRONG! We sat in the ER for 6-7 hours in a little room with no food and nothing to do! We finally asked and they brought us some graham crackers and gatorade - thanks a lot. Luckily Luke felt rotten enough that he was pretty subdued and ended up falling asleep for a lot of it.

Here we are, back in the ER!

Finally, after taking a couple of x-rays to check for an abscess and drawing some blood, they admitted us back to the trauma floor for IV antibiotics. It didn't take long for Luke to perk back up. He kept pulling the monitors off and wanted out! Luckily the nurses let us take off the monitors when he was awake and only hooked him up to the IV when it was time for another round of antibiotics.

They let us out at about 12:30 pm Sunday afternoon - for good this time!!! Goodbye hospital!!!

So here's to hoping we can keep Luke out of medical distress for awhile, though I'm not holding my breath! I have a feeling Luke takes after his dad and will not be a stranger to the ER!