When your child is ill (not cancer)
I forgot about my ailments, aches and pains while I was at my 9 year old daughters bedside for 10 days.
She had not been well for some time, a wrong diagnosis because she did not have the classic symptoms and doctors not listening to me to check her chest meant that she got the attention she needed later rather than sooner.
Once finally diagnosed as having pneumonia she was given antibiotics in emergency, the Dr. said there was something else she could not put her finger on - her instincts told her not to let us go until we could have further tests and she could confer with her collegues. Something else was showing on her xray which did not look right.
We had been to emergency a week before and were turned away being told she did not have appendix problems. Duh - yes I knew this, just listen - it is her chest. My fear was that she was having a heart attack. Our poor darling never complains about pain so I knew this was serious.
After emergency surgery for pleural effusion and in childrens icu for a day and a night. Our darling daughter had a drain in her side with suction. Being slowly weaned off the morphine and as the days passed removing as many canulas as we could from the five canulas she awoke with in icu.
The strong antibiotics given intraveneously were not working all because we were given antibiotics and morphine at the very beginning there would be no culture grown. So it was trial and error. Her temperature would continue to spike. The surgery team would come every morning, prod and poke, listen to her chest. Then the respiratory team, then the infectious diseases team, then the physio. OMG how exhausting. The hospital was doing everything in their power.
I was not eating well (she was not eating at all) and not sleeping well - my ankle pain would annoy me late at night so I would pace up and down the ward to loosen and stretch. I remembered I had not taken my fish oil for days so I sent my husband a text message to put them aside to send in for me. Days later the pain went away, thank goodness for fish oil tablets.
I watched as our darling girl screamed when blood had to be taken. I stood there when new stronger antibiotics were given via IV, she screamed it was stinging. I demanded they stop, I remembered how my veins hurt when I was having chemo. OMG I thought this is just like chemo. the meds are killing all her bugs, bad ones and good ones. How can this be happening.
I prayed, I meditated, I sent her healing energy, I called out for every favour from all those I knew and even all those ancestors that had passed. Angels, fairies (my girl loves fairies). So here we are at home. One day at a time. Slowly healing.