The Puddles

Ride in an ambulance for a medical reason.

So officially all three kids have done this now.  We told all three after the last one completed their journey that we weren’t doing any more!

So the story goes . . .

Ainsley got sick.  Like 105.3 degrees fever kind of sick.  Nothing we very experienced parents can’t handle, but when she started suffering abdominal pains (like screaming at the top of her lungs for over an hour and nothing we can do to make it go away kind of pain) we finally succumbed and called the pediatrician.  She said we had to go to the hospital.  I took Madie the last time several years ago with this issue and it ended up with an ambulance ride downtown to the Children’s hospital, so Chris took Ainsley this time.

We hoped by taking her to St. Luke’s (for those that don’t know this is a good sized and fabulous hospital) that was staffed with a pediatric ER doc that we would be able to get some answers.  But after big time pain meds and stomach meds she was still hurting.  They needed to do an ultrasound.  Unfortunately, St. Luke’s did not have a tech/radiologist (not sure which one) on duty that night.   So the one test we needed to either confirm or denounce appendicitis could not be performed.  So yet again (at 5am), we were transported downtown for the one test that Ainsley needed (by the way this is the same scenario with Madie years ago.  Needed a test. They couldn’t do perform it.)

In the end, they don’t know what caused her issues.  They think she had a virus that inflamed her IBS (?) maybe that caused the severe pain.  But the medicine helped make most of the pain go away (see the glazed look in her eye?).  By 9am, we were practically begging them to release us with a ton of promises to care for her properly and to return her if necessary.  So even though we went home with Ainsley running a 102.  At lease we got to recuperate in our own home.

I should also mention that all of this happened while Madie was having a sleepover with some of her friends.  I couldn’t really call moms at 3:00am, so I waited and called our dear neighbor/friend/nicest-boss-ever to come over at 5am so I could drive downtown to TCH to meet Chris, Ainsley, and the ambulance.  And God Bless the other friend who took the girls home in the morning and the Aunt who rescued the other Puddles to entertain them for the day while we rested from our all-nighter. It truly took a village that night to help us out!

So Ainsley got better. The followup appt. with the pediatrician still left us with more questions than answers.  But she let us put Ainsley on her tummy meds for IBS (they took her off so that her body could work on retraining itself to work correctly?  I just follow direction.), added more meds and supplements, additional blood work (that came back still abnormal), and told us to take her to church camp and come back in two weeks to talk about her continued tummy troubles. We did it all, continue to do their instructions, and will see them this week to talk again.

As long as it doesn’t’ require an ambulance ride or a trip to the ER, I’m ready for it!

UPDATE . . . .

We got a phone call from the doctor today. Ainsley has strep throat. After our second follow up visit last week, the doctor decided as an after thought to come back and test for strep.  The rapid test came back negative, but the one that was sent to the lab came back positive.  So Ainsley has been sharing strep with everyone for the last three weeks.  No symptoms. Just a fever three weeks ago.  It’s all crazy.