Ben Details: Settled in a Patient Room

Please bear with me as I sort out the events of last week. I promise by the end of this week I'll have new events to talk about. = )

So, Tuesday night they finally moved us upstairs to a patient room. Ben got to ride up to the 5th floor in a wheelchair. At 36 pounds there is NO way I could have carried him!!! He was a little nervous about the wheelchair at first until I reassured him I was following right behind.

As we entered our room I realized this would be "semi-private" accommodations. Drat! The other family seemed to be in the final stages of settling in as we entered the room. A momma and her little boy (who I later learned was 5 years-old). Shouldn't be too bad, I hoped.

A nurse came in and helped settle Ben into bed. And asked ALL the same questions. Again. At least she was really nice and seemed experienced. After she left a doctor on the floor came in and asked me all the same questions and examined Ben. By this time I concluded that no one in that hospital actually READS the charts. They just take their own notes.

My poor little guy's had his tush looked at by most of the doctors at Hasbro! It was past one AM, I was tired and my little guy was tired. The last thing I wanted to do was answer the same questions for another doctor. So I'm afraid I got a little punchy, annoyed, and was all around not a model mother of a patient. But the questions this guy asked were a little ridiculous. The one I remember was "has he been camping recently?" Honestly, I laughed out loud! Camping? In February/March? In Rhode Island? Where if we're lucky the temperature gets up to 45 degrees on a sunny day around noon? Um, no. We've not been camping, unless you count sleeping on the living room floor in sleeping bags with Daddy on Friday night.

Finally he left and Ben drifted off to sleep. THEN came another doctor. The boss of the first one. Asking all the same questions!! Aargh!! She looked at Ben's tush and the poor guy was so asleep he never stirred through the whole thing. I informed her, yet again, that I had the diapers with the blood and that they refused to look at them downstairs. "Sure. I'll look at them if you'll open them up," was her response. Apparently, hospital doctors are afraid of little boy poop. Go figure.

Keep in mind it was nearly 12 hours since those diapers were filled so it was a little hard to distinguish the blood. Except for that nickel-sized blood clot. That was still clearly visible. After she looked at the diapers she quit talking nonsense about constipation and straining during a bowel movement.

Then nurses came back in to take blood. Unfortunately, they couldn't get it out of Ben's IV so they had to stick his other arm. He slept through most of it. Toward the end he started whimpering and his bottom lip pouched out and quivered. The nurses were amazed. What can I say? He's a sound sleeper. = )

Finally all the medical people left us to sleep. I laid down in my oh-so-not-comfortable hospital chair that folds out to be a bed. And then our roommate's mom started talking on the telephone. Loudly. While the boy watched t.v. Loudly.

Her conversation would have been funny if not for being so sad. Her live-in man called to find out where she was. "In the hospital with MY son." (I'm not sure if he was the father or not. The boy never asked for "daddy" or any man.) Then she proceeded to accuse him of being with some "female." And basically said she would beat up the woman when she found out who she was. He finally convinced her he was at a friend's place, only to have her launch into "you chose your friend over me." (I should mention she was a large black woman speaking with the stereotypical accent and grammar.)

All the while the boy (JayQwan) is sitting beside her watching t.v. and the nurses keep coming in asking if she wants blankets to make out her bed. She kept telling the nurses - IN FRONT OF HIM- that she didn't need anything; "as soon as he goes to sleep I'm going home." Can you imagine leaving your 5 year-old son, who has just been admitted into the hospital for an infection in his foot, in the hospital at night alone?!

She finally got off the phone around 3:30 AM and I eventually drifted off to sleep. Until the nurses came in around 6 AM to check blood pressure and such. And woke everyone up except JayQwan. The nurses said he had managed to stay awake at least an hour after his mom fell asleep. I thought, "good for him! He outlasted her."

All totaled I had about 2 hours of sleep during our first night at the hospital and explained our situation to 4 hospital doctors and 3 hospital nurses. A fun night it was NOT!