Yuck, hospitals

Update at bottom of post.

We just got home from spending the night in the hospital. Yuck.

On Saturday night, very suddenly, Luca came down with a flu. He was sleeping fine, and started crying, so I went in to him and he was COVERED in vomit. I started to get him cleaned up and he kept on puking...and puking...and puking. My mom came and spent the night with us to help out. Luca threw up throughout the night and into the morning.

I called Health Link (which I find is hit or miss when in comes to helpful information) and they told me to keep giving fluids (duh), especially breatmilk. I thought that this sounded funny because who wants to drink milk on an upset tummy? But, oh well. I gave Luca small amounts of diluted juice and breastmilk (not combined) at 15 minute intervals. He threw up every time he had the milk. So, I stopped with the milk and pushed the juice.

On Sunday during the day, he seemed to be perking up after a good nap. He even ate some applesauce for supper and tolerated a bit of breastmilk. So at bed time I gave him a few ounces of breastmilk again. Within about half an hour, he was heaving agin almost non-stop.

I called Health Link again and they advised that I take him in to be assessed.

After 2.5 hours of tests, he was admitted to be observed. I think partly this was because I looked so haggard that the doctor took pity on me and thought I needed the break!

Being in the hospital didn't help much, except that by way of the phenomenon we all know, as soon as you get in to see a doctor, symptoms that were there disappear. Luca stopped vomiting! Horray! He started tolerating breastmilk, too.

Unfortunatley, he started to get explosive diarrhea.

And, the pediatric section that WAS in the hospital has recently been converted to offices, and their new peds section is just a room with 2 cribs and 2 cots in there. There was a toddler in the other bed with the same thing as Luca.

When one boy was trying to sleep, the other was crying. So, needless to say, no one got much sleep during the night. I was really hoping we could get some naps in, but the toddler had noisy family visitors there all day, and they kept waking Luca up.

Our room was put on isolation, which was supposed to mean no visitors, and that the nurses and doctors had to gown up and Luca and the other boy were not allowed to leave the room. (So I am not sure why the family of the other boy were there, even after I mentioned to the nurse that they were keeping Luca from sleeping).

Our doctor was there in the morning and wanted to keep us for the day to see if Luca continued to improve. She returned after her office closed and told us that we could go home. I kind of laughed, and told her that we were going home no matter what because Luca had only slept about 1/2 an hour during the whole day due to the noise in the room. She is not very impressed with the new peds set-up, either.

So, we are home now. Luca is sleeping and I am hoping that he is able to have a good sleep and that he will just continue to improve.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I am operating on quite a lack of sleep....

Update: Luca was throwing up again last night shortly after he went to bed. I gave him children's gravol (thankfully the dr. said that he weighed enough now that I could give him some if he needed it.) and he slept 8 hours straight. Drug induced, mind you, but at least he got sleep. Then he nursed and kept it down and slept for another 3 hours. He seems perkier today than he was yesterday, so hopefully we are almost at the end.....