Hospital Vent II

So.............. I took Lime's advice and cooled the heels on blogging and worried about Mr.'s diet, minime's change of venue and young masters change of custody.
Things mostly going well with above, adding that minime moved in with girlfriend weeks ago and hubby has a handle on approved intake and forbidden foods.
I am discovering that it is stressful trauma that sends me here.
This story requires background for the lurkers that won't join.
Young master was cursed with a super macho daddy that envisioned his son a nascar driver by age 18. As i fought against this concept I was worn down by the cuteness (insanity?) of a toddler driven HotWheels thingy. You've seen 'em. He promptly drove it under his dad's truck which told my educated brain that maybe he wasn't cut out for it. I won the battle for a few years pointing the child into his fathers former forte of gymnastics (Ex went to Jr. Olympics on the rings) and this went on for a few years until divorce, finances and then instructor availablity put an end to it. SAD because this child executed a perfect dismount from an Applebee's high chair at age 3.
His dad did not give up the racing dream and by age 6 he had a Honda 50 and we were in the middle of a divorce that included mediation for me to keep boy off of the death machine. Mediation just said work it out and I said I would kill the daddy if the boy got injured.

Karma is hilarious. Daddy rode/owned his share of Harleys (proving he was a worthy rider?) and on one fateful evening he was instructing a wide-eyed 7 yo how to use the death machine. It got the better of him and he rolled down a hill and a even wider-eyed kid had to call 911 on an unconcious father who was subsequently lifeflighted to a local hospital to spend a week wondering if he would lose his polio-striken leg. [evening call goes " hello this is Rockdale County SHeriffs dept. Do you have a son named BLAH BLAH BLAH?" Mouth too dry to answer that question as he followed up with " EX MR has been lifeflighted to lala land".

He recovers from that mishap to buy a better more efficient death machine and move to a location where the boy could REALLY ride, with woods and trees and dirt roads.
So the young child rode, and rode and rode til one day in that 8-9th year he comes back from daddy's with info of a wreck where "somehow my helmet came off" that would require me to follow up with neck x rays which in turn found "nothing wrong" and "maybe some ligament damage" that was causing him to not turn his head correctly. He eventually compensated and time rolled on until about a year ago when he began complaining again of neck pain. Since i was under the care of a wonderful chiro i took the boy there and lo and behold was surprised to learn the his was the most effed up neck in the county with an OLD broken odontoid process at his C2. He went hands off and sent him to a neurologist ( which truly shows his worth).
Now here i sit 4 different types of x-rays, 3 MRI's and a second opinion later in Egleston's Childrens hospital in Atlanta while my son recovers from a "rib fusion". A wonderful surgeon cut a piece of bone from the rib and performed a graft at the C2 to an adjoining C and screwed them together to ensure this graft would take. He will have slightly limited mobility that he will be able to compensate for at his young age and over time.

In the here and now he is incorrigible. I love him but DAMMIT. There are so many babies on this floor that i feel weird crying out to nurses for help but I cannot make him do what he needs to do to get out of here. Surgery was Friday, he was supposed to go home tomorrow but no go.

He was not prepared(literally) for the pain. Step mom handled preop since daddy just had knee replacement (besides having polio see Karma above) and can hardly get around. She did not get near enough info for us to be the best caregivers we could be but I do not blame her. I have found those to blame and they have taken responsibility. Hope I affected change for the next person.
Step mom doesn't do hospitals overnight ( although she has turned out to be a good caretaker while dad is down) and dad can only hang around for a few hours at a time since after the surgery.

Add to this formula that for any spinal surgery the patient WILL experience extreme headaches and require complete darkness and silence and you can see by the length of my post I am damn near a basket case. I have been kicked from watching TV in unoccupied rooms across the hall twice and when it was explained why i almost cried again. "What if you left a germ in an already cleaned room and we placed a sick baby in there?" needless to say i felt like crap.



I was invited to a focus group for parents today. Oh lawd they shouldnt oughta asked me my opinion. I had a laundry list of suggestions, but the blue ribbon went to another mother who found her 7 yo in a bloody hospital room left unsupervised by the nurse he ripped out his iv and blew blood everywhere. This got the guest Liason's attention pretty quick. Although we did have a nurse who could not seem to understand written Dr. orders, it was not gory or life-threatening, just a pain/comfort level issue. Most of my frustration is with the dysfunctionality of mine and my son's relationship, which is why he went to live with his dad just before christmas. It was a friendly legal proceding designed to honor the wishes of the child and lessen the pocket pull of dad, but all for the better management of a child recently diagnosed with ADHD.



As I sit here trying to be delightfully descriptive and wonderfully witty it really just boils down that this is therapy for me since i have burnt up the cell phone battery and people have to continue living their lives even while mine comes to a tornadic stop.








Pray for me as I pray for a quick and complete recovery and please pray for me to not play the blame card while I am here. I will wait for Lloyd to do that.