A Trip to The Hospital...

Well, I will take a quick break from reliving our Ethiopian trip to let you know that our baby boy spent the better part of the night last night in Children's Hospital.

He had a fever for the last couple of days, but last night it wouldn't go down and in fact was steadily climbing...when it got to 39.4 and wasn't responding to meds, we decided to take him in.

We left home at 8:20 p.m, arrived at the hospital at 9 p.m. and then started the marathon evening of tests, needles and more tests. As Moses is from Ethiopia and does not have an established immunization history yet, they seemed worried about infections and "nasty things from Africa growing in the blood" (direct quote!) At one point, a Dr. said to us that if he was "just" a "regular" kid coming in, he would have been discharged way earlier and we would have been told it was just a virus.

Now...the staff were actually wonderful and fantastic with Moses, but it was a little disheartening to have several medical people all wanting different tests, just because he recently came from Africa. I know WHY they wanted to do it, and I CAN see the wisdom in it, but it meant Dave and I being stuck in the E.R. for 6 hours while they took blood from his arm, mucus from his little nose, and poked, prodded and tested him ad nauseum.

I remember at 12:30, Dave and I just looked at each other and almost died laughing because Moses had morphed into "hyper-baby"...I don't know if it was the stronger fever meds they gave him to bring his fever down or what...but he was hysterically funny. He was laughing LOUDLY, throwing his arms in the air, throwing things off the bed, blowing raspberries at us, kicking his legs up and banging them on the bed over and over...and then lying down and laughing again. All the other babies in the E.R. were crying and screaming, and we were trying to stop Moses from laughing so loud.

He didn't laugh at the bloodwork or the nasal collection or having a little urine bag attached...that wasn't funny. Eventually the bloodwork and other results arrived and sure enough, it was "just" a regular virus. Maybe his little body wasn't used to our horrible Canadian viruses...maybe he's only used to African viruses, I don't know.

The final funny episode (funny now, not then) was that we were kept for the last hour just until he peed into the little urine bag so that they could check his pee. They kept coming and checking if he had peed (remember he had the bag on for 6 HOURS) and finally they said they were going to have to put a baby catheter in. A few minutes later the Dr. came back and said that they didn't need the urine sample any more...and of course Moses filled the bag to the top...straight away! His leaving present was an enormous poopy diaper that leaked out all over the sheets and the bed...the smell was horrific and we quickly made our exit. We arrived home after 4 a.m. What an experience.