Craziest week of my life - loooong story

After Koa was born, I came home to find that Mana was not really getting better from her Strep Throat.  Keanu and Mana had both received Zithromax on Saturday March 17, the day Koa was born, but Mana had thrown up a couple of doses and her stomach hurt and she was just looking really bad.  On Monday we talked to the Dr. and they gave her a prescription for a different antibiotic that would be less harsh on her stomach.  But then on Tuesday we took her back to the Dr. they said she just needs to eat small amounts of food, and stay hydrated, and that Strep can really bother the stomach.  Also the Dr. recommended if at all possible that I take the baby and leave the house for a week, while the sickness was rampant in my house.

It was very hard to do that, but Koa and I left the house and stayed at our good friend's home.  Every night the family skyped with me so they could see the baby and I could see them.  Thursday morning I talked to Robb and he said that he was considering taking Mana to the E.R.  I told him to go ahead and do that if he felt it was right. He said she was just not getting better (he had to carry her around the house, and she was only whispering, not eating etc.).  Robb took Mana to Sierra Vista and Anu went with him because he was very attached to Dad ever since Mom disappeared from the house for days.  They ran tests and xrays and determined she was dehydrated and they did an i.v. on her to rehydrate her. After that ran through they said she could be released.  I was so relieved.  I was totally afraid that she was going to be admitted to the hospital, and I didn't know how we would handle it.

But then Robb called a bit later and said that after they said she could be released, Robb told them that her stomach still really hurts. So they agreed to do a CT scan. After the scan took place, the doctor told Robb that he could see an obstruction in the intestines but needed a surgeon to look at it.  They got a surgeon to look at it and then I received a scary phone call at about 7 pm. It was Dr. Pollock saying that there is an obstruction in her intestines, and they need to go in and do surgery right away and  remove her appendix as well, whether or not it was inflamed.  I was totally freaked out. I had went from thinking she was coming home, to now hearing she was about to have surgery!  So many thoughts went through my head, from questioning if the surgery were necessary, to feeling guilty that I had just had a baby and wasn't able to be with Mana as much as I would have wanted to be.

I zipped right over to Sierra Vista to go see Mana before surgery, I hadn't seen her since Tuesday.  I could barely drive, I was in such a panic.  I went into that crazy E.R. and I got Anu from Robb, who had been sitting in the E.R. for 5 hours being such a good 2 year old boy.  It was really freaky to be in the E.R. and then a motorcycle accident came in and bumped Mana out of being 1st in line for surgery.  I felt so awful leaving that hospital, with Robb and Mana still there, knowing what was all about to happen.  Mana was laying on a gurney covered in our Hulk blanket that they had brought with them.

I laid awake at home waiting for a call or text, and finally at midnight I got the text that they just took her away to do the surgery.  Then I lay in bed waiting for 1.5 hours to pass, and finally got the text that Robb was with my little girl in the recovery room, and it went well. Once they opened her up they discovered her appendix had ruptured and her abdomen was full of puss.  I was so relieved that it was all done, but then all the thoughts of things going wrong went through for the next several days as she made a slow recovery at the hospital. 

It was so ironic that Robb had scheduled 2 weeks of vacation from UPS for the 2 weeks after my due date.  It was really lucky he had this time off because Mana came home from the hospital on Friday, the last day of his vacation.  They spent a total of 8 nights in Sierra Vista, and got to kow the nurses and staff well.  We feel lucky to have such good care in our area. 

Mana was supposed to have i.v. antibiotics for 10 days, and that 10 days didn't end until Tuesday. So they sent us to a Home Health Care place right after she was released from the hospital. The nurses there showed us how to do her i.v. infusions.  She needed 2 different antibiotics to kill her infection, one is only 1x per day and the other is 3x per day.  So we had to do infusions at 3 am, 11 am, 3 pm, 7 pm.  Thank goodness Robb is much better with medical stuff than me. I practically faint when I get close to needles or tubes coming out of people.  Running the infusions was not very simple. It required first running a syringe to clean the tube, which you first had to get an air bubble out of, and only squirt a certain amount of the syringe into her i.v.  Then you had to attach the antibiotic to a manual machine and set it all right and then let it run for about 20-30 minutes.  Then you have to run the cleaning liquid through her i.v. again. And then you run an anticoagulant through.  The entire process took about one hour.  Due to the amount of steps involved, and degree of accuracy required to get it right, I would have been way too fearful that I would do something wrong.  One of the antibiotics was in the refridgerator and the other wasn't.  Just too much room for error!  But thank heavens Robb did an outstanding job and never messed up, not once!

They told us all the things that could go wrong, including the i.v. tube getting clogged, her i.v. coming out, etc... and it made be weak in the stomach to even think about it.  They also gave us an emergency kit in case she had an allergic reaction, and that freaked me out.  They said that if you notice an allergic reaction, stab the epipen into her leg before you even call for help.  ugh!!!

We we soooo blessed that my mom was down visiting us to help with the new baby because she was able to stay at the house during Mana's hospital visit. I needed to have her with me. She drove kids to school, made meals, etc, took out the trash and all those important things.

And we were so blessed by all our friends and family who came out of the woodwork to help us.  We had meals delivered to our door every night, we had phone calls daily asking if we needed anything from the store, we had neighbors taking the kids places, friends taking kids to school, etc.  We are so thankful to all of you!!!  It sure made it easier to get through a rather rough time.

Mana steps foot out of the van after not being home for 9 days.

Mana finally got to hold her new baby Kekoa when he was 13 days old.  She loves him so much.

I noticed that Robb's shirt was so perfect that day.  Not only is he an example of the greatest dad, the shirt happens to be from Mana's birth year, the girl he was a very special dad to these past 9 days.



Mana keeping busy during an infusion by reading a huge stack of books brought by her teacher.