Public Ward, Private Pain

After spending the last 2 days squirrelled away in a single room with a seal on the heavy door, today, we were to see how "the others" lived in hospital.

The private room we had meant we were able to process our pain in our private way. We had gotten familiar with the nursing staff and they knew what we needed even before we asked for it. This morning, we were told we would be moving to a general ward, as all the tests came back showing Sean had nothing contagious. As the hospital only had 8 beds for kids with infectious diseases, and we were taking up one of those beds and didn't need it, we had to move.

We approached the nursing staff and asked to be put into a private room, but they said the chances of us getting a private room were slim to none. As we were waiting on so many more test results, the best thing to do for the time being was to be in a general ward. We hoped we would end up in a small configuration, sharing with only 1 or 3 others, but alas, we ended up in a ward with 6 bays.

Originally, we were placed in the middle bay, with a premmie baby on one side and a little girl, around 3 years old on the other. It really wasn't the most ideal of places, and when we spied the empty bay next to the door, we asked to move there, and we did. We were told that Sean was a "high acuity" patient, which meant that he needed attention from the nurses who were asked to do hourly observations on Sean, checking his temperature and breath rate and other things. The "high acuity" status also meant that we needed to be as close to the nurses station as possible, and the rooms with smaller configurations were too far away. With a sigh of resignation, we settled into our very small bay as best as we could.

Aside from the premmie baby and the 3 year old little girl, there were 2 other babies in the ward; a little girl who was about 3 months old, and a little boy who was 3 weeks old. Each had their problems, and even though it was a public ward, everyone was lost in their own private pain, just as we were.

With tomorrow being Monday, we hope to have more answers and be closer to going home.

◦•◦♡◦•◦♥◦•◦♡◦•◦♥◦•◦♡◦•◦♥◦•◦♡◦•◦

Hi Mum,

We moved out of the infectious diseases ward today and are now in a general ward. The good thing is Sean does not appear to have a contagious infection. The bad thing is we went from a single private room to a big room housing 6 babies.

There are 4 brand new babies in our room, as well as a girl of about 3 who is severely constipated. Poor thing refuses to take her medication as it doesn't taste nice, and her belly is hurting so much. We are right next to the door, which is right next to the nurses station, which means we are really in the thick of things. It's quite noisy and with Sean being a fairly light sleeper, tonight is going to be an interesting night.

Sean was quite good last night. He only woke once, and the nurse last night took pity on me when she found me crying into my dinner of instant noodles and took care of Sean so I could sleep. Everyone got a fairly decent night's sleep in the end, which we all needed.

Sean had to have another X-ray of his chest today to see if there had been any significant changes to the one taken last Thursday when we were admitted. The X-ray showed no change, which is good as it means he hadn't gotten any worse.

The doctors have prescribed some oral antibiotics for Sean, which he is taking like a trouper. He is now off the drip but still on the oxygen. His saturation levels dipped quite low at one point tonight, while he was happily drinking his milk, so the nurses rushed to put the mask on him, which upset him greatly and he ended up vomiting the whole bottle back up. I was so mad with those damn nurses. It took me half an hour to get that milk into him, only to see him bring it all back up. Very upsetting.

We're not sure if Sean will have the surgery to remove the lymph mode tomorrow, as it's not scheduled on the charts and no one seems to know anything about it. Same goes for the echocardiogram. All we can do is wait.

It now appears the doctors are looking to rule out cystic fibrosis. I'm pretty sure my side of the family has zero history of CF; what about yours? Anyway, that's one of the things they are looking for. That and leukaemia and some other stuff. I'll be sure to ask Dr Allen lots more questions tomorrow.

We discovered tonight that Sean likes vanilla custard and lemon icy poles. Little man ate a big tub of custard after a little bit of roast beef and veggies, and kept licking on my icy pole too. He's got his father's sweet tooth!!!

Sean is now finally asleep. The same nurse who upset him earlier accidentally woke him just as I'd finally coaxed him to sleep. It took me another 20 minutes after that to get him down again. Lucky for her, she's gone home for the night. I was ready to punch her!

Jonathan is home again tonight to deal with laundry and clearing out our fridge, chucking out leftovers and the like. I think I'm going to try and sleep too, even though I know it's going to be hard with so many crying babies.

We'll write again tomorrow night. It was good to talk to you today. Hope that nasty cough goes away soon!