Walking The Halls

My Dad laughs at me and says I take pictures of everything. So in the middle of the night when sleep just won't come, what else is there to do? It was a very pretty hospital. 

 Hallway to Cancer Center

 Chess anyone?

 The ceiling in the Women's section

 The Children's Chapel

The Butterfly Garden

Isolation Sucks!!

A few things happen when you aquire a communicable disease that scares the hell out of everyone in society:

 Everyone wants to know if THEY are at risk, and should THEY get tested.  And then they want to ask you a bunch of stupid ass questions that accomplish much of nothing because most of them can't be answered yet by me anyway. Really, I don't care. I will be honest. My son has tuberculosis, end of story. (but if it makes some of you feel better, it is almost impossible for a baby to transmit the tuberculosis bacteria). I was told by the doctor today that when all is said and done it is most certainly an adult who gave it to him. So maybe YOU are the one that passed it to HIM.

The second amazing thing that happens is;

 You are carefully, and at times, not so carefully reminded that you are no longer the one in charge. Your child has a "communicable disease". The health department takes over. There are laws that govern your ability to freely move around in society like a normal person. And if you break those laws, you will got to jail. It has happened....google it. Someone will come to our house to give him his TB medication. I never handle those drugs and if I were to wake up an obstinent bitch one day and try to refuse then they simply take him away and give him to someone else.

No Outside World For You!!!

 One of Ollie's favorite things to do is to be outside. It has been over a month since he has been able to tolerate being outside. But when it cools down and the air is not so thick I have done my best to let him go out for a little while.

 We spend a lot of time standing on this ledge. He loves to just stand there and look outside. I tried to get the staff to let us put a mask on him and take him to the Butterfly Garden. NO WAY SAYS THEY!! Gosh, you would think he has Tb or something. Assholes.

Losing All the Control

The pulmonologist just became my best friend or my dreaded enemy. Go figure. We talked, we didn't freak out. We waited over four hours for a bed that was reserved the day before. I became one of "those parents". I even threatened to let my child walk around in the halls! There comes a moment when you realize you no longer have any of the control. And I was not quite there yet.

Things never go as planned.....

Imagine my shock when Ollie's PPD was looking a bit reactive. How about the next day when it was twice as big. Well OH SHIT, we have a problem. The pediatrician seemed a little unexpecting of that as well. Oh hell, now what? You wait, that's what. One doctor has to talk to another doctor and the other doctor has to decide they want to help you, ect, ect, ect. This was on Monday, we were scheduled to see the pediatric pulmonologist on Wednesday. I had two days to come to the current understanding of what fear was really about. My son might have tuberculosis.....but let's be totally honest; what red blooded white, American middle class baby gets tuberculosis?And where in the hell could it have come from?? Fear; do any of the other boys have it? Fear; does Ollie REALLY have TB? Two days to grind my head into a stone and WAIT.

How I got here.....

Months of being sick. Well he just has bad asthma. Well now he has pneumonia. Well that antibiotic didn't work, here's another. Well he looks ok, so he will continue to improve. Well he doesn't look sick, so he's fine. Of course we won't do that test. Why are you bringing him to the doctor all the time for a cough. There is nothing else we can do for him.

Yeah, yeah, most people know my struggle, they have been listening to me bitch about it for months. Nothing new and different here.

So I have this friend named Kellie, who has a friend who is a pediatrician,  I thought here is a string to pull and I am pulling it! So I asked to get him to just listen to our story and not push me off like our 2 ED visits and multiple office visits. He was reassuring that we would figure this out. All the chips were in his basket, but I had zero faith we would be taken any more seriously.

What happened next was amusing. And I thought maybe sometimes doctors just like to throw out curve balls to entertain themselves. So............he gave Ollie a PPD test; which checks for mycobacterium antibodies in the blood. That means tuberculosis.