Let's Go To The Emergency Room!

What an interesting day I had.

The only thing I had scheduled on the calendar was to take the other set of grandparents to get their haircuts. I had alot to do at home. My poor house has been neglected something awful. The laundry just keeps piling up.

Before we get to the 'fun' part, let's review my last two weeks.
I had 7 (ages ranged 10 mos to 13 yrs) kids in and out of my house for 4 days over the halloween weekend which is also my daughter's birthday.

My now teenage daughter has taken on a new meaning. I think it involves 4-letter words.

I found that my teenage daughter had decided it was 'cool' to carve initials in her leg. Needless to say, I was livid. That went over like a ton of bricks as well as the wonderful attitude she'd developed. The initials belonged, not to a boy she liked, but to wrestlers. Wrestling now is banned, prohibited and void in any form or fashion in this house. I realize that it was not really the main problem but it didn't hurt to get rid of it.

My dad is not doing well. He's sleeping most of the time. My granddad is running to the aggressive extreme. He 'verbally' assaulted another resident today. Would that be why I requested YESTERDAY a light relaxing sedative as needed???

I went to my youngest son's teacher conference. It did not go well. I like this teacher and I feel confident that she knows what she is doing. We had a nice little conversation. She is concerned about his speech. I assured her that it is actually coming right along. After his surgery (tonsil and adnoid removal and the addition of a 2nd set of tubes in the ears), he was making giant steps in his speech. She and I are concerned though that he is not catching up to his peers. My child has never, ever had any interest in learning his letters or numbers. He loves building things, taking them apart, only had to be told once about left and right and has more common sense than his mother (that's me! LOL). The teacher and I agreed to wait and let him try to catch up on his own rather than put him in another class. I don't want him 'labeled' but I don't want to wait too long either. Rock and a hard place. What is really wild is that while he can't recite his numbers (or write them) 1 - 10, he can very easily write them as 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. He can also write his name backwards perfectly to be read in a mirror. He has a lot of trouble writing it forward. I explained to the teacher about my past experiences. My middled child/son, learned to read 2 weeks before 1st grade. He is now about to test out of 3rd grade reading (not the 3rd grade itself) into 4 grade reading lexiles. When my daughter was 3 (or 4) yrs old, I was told that she was learning disabled with ADD (or ADHD, can't remember). She is now scheduled to take the SAT in January (she's in the 7th grade) and possibly taking college courses at a large, popular university in this state. She's been in advanced classes since 1st grade. Those are the reasons I don't want my youngest labeled. If he needs the help, I want him to have it.

Ok, on to the topic at hand in the title.

While on the way to school this morning, my oldest son was complaining that his chest hurt on the left side. I had been told by the dr that sometimes asthma will make you hurt there. I told him (since I didn't have an inhaler with me in the van) to use the one at school if he still hurt. He wasn't wheezing as if he was having an asthma attack. Now at 8 yrs old, they will sometimes tell you about every little thing that hurts so I wasn't seriously concerned. I was told by the school nurse that he had used his inhaler about 8:30ish this morning. While working in 'centers' (not physical stuff), he raised his hand. He felt a pain in his left arm (the one raised) and his arm fell to his side. He told his teacher who in turn sent him to the school nurse. As confident in my youngest son's teacher, I am even more so in the school nurse. She checked him over and called me. She said he was having chest pains with pain radiating down his left arm. Yeah, that's the first thing I thought of. It's not common but not unheard of for a child to have a heart attack. The school nurse said he was not having a problem with his breathing but was sweaty and shaky (could have been the albuterol???). I immediately called the drs office who said to take him straight to the emergency room. I fleeeeeeeeeewwwwww to the school, picked him up and flewwwwwwwww to the e.r.. His blood pressure was 146/61. I don't know what a child's bp should be but I'll be finding out tomorrow at the follow up doctor's appt. Anyway, they hooked him up to heart monitors and did an ekg. They didn't find anything (thank goodness). They did a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia (sp?). Didn't find anything. (Thank goodness again.) The dr said that he guessed it was either an asthma attack or a touch of pleurisy (infection in the lining of the lungs). I don't know about that either since he wasn't having any problems breathing (good rrs, good sp02) at any point. I'm just glad it wasn't his heart. He had a heart murmur as a baby and this just felt like it was coming back to haunt us. Now, this child whom I am being scared to death over is having a crisis about 10 mins after we got to the er. His big problem: When is lunch???? Can I have some water? Can I watch cartoons? (They have flat screen tvs on the walls.)
AAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There are still 7 hours before I have to get up tomorrow and start my day all over again. That leaves 6 hours and 59 minutes for the next crisis to fall in my lap.

You know, I know that other people have it much worse. I wish I had the patience and the sanity that they have. Sometimes I feel like I am creepy crawling right out of my skin just waiting for the next crisis. I am not a strong enough person to handle a 9 - 5 job but here I am, dealing with other peoples lives. What the hell was I thinking????


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