118) Yet another hospital visit

I wrote most of this on Wednesday January 8^th, but I was unable to completely finish. Today is Friday the 10th, and I’m going to do an edit of what I started, and finish it up so that it hopefully feels cohesive.

I’m going to start out by saying E is fine, but on Tuesday January 7^th, he woke up at 4:30am with a fever. Even before taking his temperature, I KNEW that we were going to be making yet another trip to the hospital. When we did grab the thermometer, it read 38.2°C. My wife made the call to our satellite, and they suggested calling SickKids, because we were supposed to be going there the very next day. She paged an oncologist, and they said yes, we should come to SickKids. She graciously let me sleep a bit more because I’d be driving, and she packed up some things we’d need. J woke up while my wife was packing, and our debate was whether to bring him with us, or wait a bit until before-care opened so we could drop him off.

The decision was made to drop J off at before-care, have him go to school, and then get family to pick him up at the end of the day. We dropped him off, and we were on our way. Google Maps said the best route was the 401/DVP, and while it was slow, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.

When we’re at our satellite hospital, we go directly to the pediatric floor into the POGO clinic, and the nurses will access him, draw blood, and do whatever other things are required. At SickKids, it’s a little different. You go in through the emergency department. If there’s a line, you just skip it, and tell the triage nurse that your son is an oncology patient, and that we called ahead to say we’re on our way. They’ll put you in an area away from the potential sicknesses & germs to do height/weight/temperature, etcetera. Once you’re out of the waiting room, the Emergency Department at SickKids (if you’ve had the good fortune of never having to go there), is made up of a bunch of private rooms. Each room is maybe 10x10, has a bed, a couple of chairs, a TV, and medical equipment. They have sliding glass doors so you can minimize noise levels to other patients, and a curtain you can draw for privacy. We were put in room 7.

E was accessed, had blood drawn, temperature taken, etc. etc. etc. We briefed our nurse about his condition, his medications, what’s been happening over the past several weeks, what part of treatment he’s in, and a number of other questions they asked of us.

Blood results took a bit longer to come back that what we had expected, but it didn’t show too much of a change from Monday, when we had been at our satellite clinic. White counts & neutrophils were slightly down, hemoglobin remained steady, and his platelets were up a bit. His fever had gotten up to 38.9°C, he was given Tylenol for it, and within an hour it was down to 37.9°C. Still high, but much better. Our emergency team told us they were liaising with the oncology team to see whether we’d be admitted.

Around 1:30pm, an oncology Fellow arrived at our room to examine E. He was happy with everything he saw, and said that we would not be admitted, and that we could go home. Before we were able to leave, he wanted an Influenza A swab done on E. He tested negative for Influenza A, but interestingly, the results from nose swab they use to affirm or deny the diagnosis can be done in 5 to 8 minutes. The SickKids ER must have been understaffed, overvisited, or both that day. Don’t get me wrong, I love nurses, and I have so much respect for their jobs, and what they do to care for total strangers. They are the lifeblood of our medical system, and our hospitals, and clinics would completely fall apart without them. I was however, getting a little irritated and anxious that a nose swab and de-accessing E’s port took two hours. From when we were told we could leave a bit after 1:30pm, we weren’t able to leave until a bit after 3:30pm, putting us right in the thick of GTA rush hour traffic. Also, before leaving, we were told that E’s bone marrow aspirate scheduled for the next day would be postponed to a date and time TBA.

It was a slow, almost 2 hour drive home. My wife had her mother pick up J from school, because you can never be certain that you’ll make it in time. Leaving SickKids, Waze said we’d be at home by 5:25pm, but we didn’t roll into the driveway until about 5:50pm. We actually would have had time to pick up J, but we would have just barely made it.

We scrounged up some dinner for ourselves, and the kids. After, I took E, my wife took J, and we put the kids to bed. I made it down to the couch, and I was hoping to unwind a bit & watch something, but I faded, and passed out. It was a long, exhausting day.