skipping around

I know I haven't finished my hospital story yet, and I'm sure I will eventually, but I'm just not in the mood. I once again ignored my gut feeling and paid for it, but some good did come out of it.

I woke up Sunday morning and I was all excited because no one else was up. I was going to make some coffee, check my Facebook, and blog without my family bugging me. So I walked the dog, got the coffee brewing, turned on my laptop and..."Good morning, Mom!" Baby Boy is just so dang cute you can't get mad at him, so I made him something to eat and a little coffee milk and figured I'd get around to my plans later. We'd all had a late night the night before but there was a lot to do before my mom came up to stay with the kids while DH and I went to St. Louis for my doctors' appointments so I went ahead and dragged NumberOneSon and Ms. Thang out of bed, got em going on breakfast, made a list of what they needed to do and ran downstairs to get dressed. DH was already up too. I took off my jammie shirt and what do I see? Hives! I'd been a little itchy but I'd itched for days with all the narcotics so I just hadn't thought much of it. So DH comes back in to get dressed and I asked him if he could see any on my back. Oh yeah...great, allergic reaction to which of the bazillion drugs I'm taking? I'm guessing the antibiotic, which was prescribed by the plastic surgeon so I call him. His recording says to page the plastic surgery resident on call, whom I will now refer to as Dr. Dumbass. So I call the number and get a real person, who puts me on hold and gets Dr. Dumbass on the phone. I give him all the pertinent facts...name, what surgery on what date by what surgeon, symptoms, and what it likely is based on my previous history. I have had allergic reactions to several antibiotics and even had a reaction to penicillin that caused my throat to start closing and really scared me to death. So I guess you could say I've been there, done that, and know the routine. My plan was to get some clothes on and head up to either Urgent Care or the ER, get a steroid shot, maybe some benedryl or something, and go on my merry way. Instead, I listened to Dr. Dumbass. He says, "Well, this sounds like a pretty complicated situation. I'm going to speak to the chief resident and call you back. Have you taken any benedryl?" I told him I had indeed taken some benedryl and hung up with him. He called me back about five minutes later and told me he thought I needed to go to the ER (well, duh, Dr. Dumbass) and not take any more of my antibiotic. Then he put the chief resident on who proceeded to tell me I needed to drive to St. Louis to come to the ER. I asked him why and he said, "Oh, I doubt your local hospital will want to deal with a post-op patient who didn't have surgery there." Hmmm, now I had already considered that but I live nearly 4 hours away from St. Louis. I explained this to him and he said, well you can try your local ER but I doubt they'll do anything other than send you this way. Oh, and don't go to the ER where you had your surgery, come downtown. Now wait a minute...you just said they wouldn't do anything at the hospital where I hadn't had surgery and now you're telling me to go to the hospital where I didn't have surgery...So here's the place where I should have gone with my gut feeling and took a short jaunt up to the Urgent Care at the hospital where I used to work. I blame the drugs...clouded my judgement and besides, Barnes and Wash U are a lot more prestigious than Cox so surely their residents know a little more than ours...um, no. Residents are naive at best and dangerous at worst, but always clueless! In the meantime, DH remembers my penicillin reaction and is chomping at the bit to get going. I looked at the time and thought, by the time we get there and go through the ER and get home, it's almost going to be time to turn around and drive back up for my doctors' appointments. So I grabbed my meds and my makeup bag, threw our toothbrushes and deodorant in and told DH to grab a change of undies. I was going to pack a bag with clothes but he was freaking out so we jumped in the truck and drove off, calling his parents on the way so they could come stay with the kids in case we got back late.

Four hours later, I'm starting to get hives on my face and they're down almost to my knees, the benedryl is not working for the itching, and we get to the ER. The triage nurse looks at me and says, I'm sending you over to Urgent Care. Who told you to come all the way up here for an allergic reaction? The chief resident. I don't think she was impressed. Three hours later, I finally see the PA in Urgent Care. He asked me, who told you to come all the way up here for an allergic reaction? The chief resident. I don't think he was impressed either. He gave me some steroids and something stronger than benedryl for itching and a script for an antibiotic that should provide good coverage that I had taken before without problems. By the time we found a pharmacy that was open on Sunday night and ate something, we were going to be past midnight getting home. And we were planning to drive up the next afternoon anyway for Tuesday appointments. So my poor in-laws had to spend the night at our house ill prepared and DH and I had to spend two nights in St. Louis ill prepared. Fortunately I'd gotten most of the stuff I needed and I found a Wal-mart to round out my wardrobe and personal needs.

The good thing that came out of it was that we got to spend some time with our friends Kondee's Mom and Mando Man. DH and I have not seen Mando Man in quite a while so it was a lot of fun to catch up. We spent time at the place where they're working and then had a nice meal out with them.

I'm falling asleep and I'll start accidentally erasing things if I don't quit for the night. Hopefully I'll have enough time to catch up over the next few days.