Vacation turned into a hospital stay (part 2)

Being Transported

As we waited for the Kangaroo team from Children's Hospital in Houston to arrive we stood one on each side of Gavin and waited. He had tubes down his throat to help him breath because his airwaves we're closing. A nurse stood at his thigh giving him an Epi Pen every 3-5 minutes to keep his airwaves open to breath.

Epi Pen:
A needle fitted into a tube that looks like a pen, used for putting a drug into someone who is having a severe allergic reaction to something. (Now seen on TV commercials)

There was a nurse at the Lake Jackson hospital that really clicked with me. I'm pretty sure God brought her my way for comfort. She wasn't even our nurse but walked by and asked if I needed anything. We got to talking as I waited for Children's to get there. We talked about Gavin and how she had a one year old son too. We talked about natural birthing, cloth diaping, and a lot more mom stuff. I felt we had a a lot in common. It just felt nice to talk to someone and actually feel like someone cared on a personal level and not on a medical level.

The Kangaroo team of 4 people arrived after only three hours of being at the local ER in Lake Jackson, TX. It all seemed so quick. The emergency doctor was worried I could see it all over her face. As she escorted herself from the room I saw her through a glass window inhaling then exhaling very deeply as if she were relieved. Thank God she kept calm thoughout every step before performing anything on my son.

Oh, wait, I forgot to put this in "The Arce Family" post... Gavin's body was so swollen they could not put an IV on him because they couldn't find any veins. Therefore, the ER doctor gave Gavin 3 IO's (Intraosseous Infushion). That's a small needle that goes directly to the bone to get fluids to the body. Normally, you only need to perform ONE IO but because he was so swollen they had to do 3.

So the team arrives and greeted themselves right away. We had to make a decision, who was to stay with Gavin in the ambulance and who was to drive the car to the hospital. I still had a bit of anxiety and was still shaky. My husband said he would drive right behind us the whole way and I were to call him if anything happened in the ambulance truck since he wouldn't know what was going on.

I sat in the passenger side of the ambulance truck with the driver since I wasn't able to sit in the back with Gavin. There was silence the entire drive. The driver tried small talking with me but he got the hint and stopped trying to talk to me. I just wanted silence.

We finally arrive after the hour drive. We went into the side of the hospital where the ambulances enter in. As we were walking I was reading the floor and room names. We finally got to our floor and I look up, we're on the ICU floor (Intensive Care Unit).