FIRST PERSON | Saturday night at the children’s E.R.: coughs, fevers and frayed nerves | 24CA News
This First Person column is the expertise of Bailey White, a CBC journalist and a mom who lives in St. John’s. For extra details about CBC’s First Person tales, please see the FAQ.
“He has a fever and his breathing is shallow,” I inform the nurse standing on the opposite aspect of a retractable nylon belt.
My son, 17 months previous, is draped throughout my shoulder, flushed and immobile. His father and my husband is within the automobile. Only one among us is allowed in. It’s Saturday night time on the Janeway Children’s Health and Rehabilitation Centre in St. John’s.
The last item my husband did earlier than leaving work the day earlier than was write a narrative on this very web site about excessive affected person volumes within the kids’s emergency room. Officials had stated each time doable, dad and mom ought to take children to their household physician — not the ER.
“More than 40 breaths a minute,” I inform the nurse. The 811 nurse we spoke to on the telephone earlier that night time stated if our son took greater than 40 a minute to see a health care provider immediately. We counted 44.
“That’s to be expected if a child has a fever,” this nurse tells me.
I’m nonetheless uncertain if we should be on the hospital. But the nurse shrugs and says, “Let’s get you triaged. Take off his coat so we can check his vitals.”
Estimated wait time: 4 hours
We sit within the ready room going through a Peter Pan mural. Thomas the Tank Engine is on TV. A person strides towards the nursing station from someplace behind me.
He desires to understand how for much longer earlier than his child is seen.
Right now the estimated wait time is 4 hours, one other nurse explains.
“Other kids who came in after us have already been seen,” he responds.
She tells him that it is all about how the youngsters current, and the way critical their signs are.
“You don’t have to be rude about it,” he solutions, turning on his heels again towards a little bit lady mendacity throughout three seats.
In entrance of me, a teenage lady sits alone in Tinkerbell pyjama pants tucked into wool socks. Across the aisle, a girl with a tiny child asleep in her arms sits subsequent to a person flanked by two boys in masks. Everyone is sporting a masks, apart from the infant and my little man.
For the primary yr of his life, our son was by no means sick. He is a pandemic child. He didn’t get out a lot. Then he went to daycare and he received all types of bugs. Pink eye, abdomen stuff, hand, foot and mouth. Incredibly, miraculously, not COVID-19. None of us have had it, however we all know it is coming.
Now, watching his little stomach heave below his dinosaur pyjamas, we worry he has respiratory syncytial virus — RSV. Or pneumonia. Perhaps bronchitis. We’ve by no means seen him like this.
The triage nurse says his oxygen saturation is nice, and his respiratory sounds effective. His blood strain is regular. His fever is delicate.
“So, should we stay?” I ask her.
“Well, you’re here now,” she solutions.
iPads, storybooks, Cheerios
In the ready room, my son lies on my shoulder and I am unable to see his face. I ask {the teenager} in entrance of us to examine if he is asleep. She says no. It’s about 6:45 p.m., which is when he usually begins preparing for mattress.
Behind me there is a tow-headed boy, perhaps eight, curled on his aspect, watching movies on an iPad. His mother makes a FaceTime name so the boy’s brother and his dad can say hiya. “I miss you,” the brother tells the boy within the ready room.
His mom tells his father that it should not be for much longer. There aren’t many kids left who’ve been right here so long as them.
My personal son is beginning to perk up. He slides off my shoulder and begins wanting via my backpack. He pulls out a cup stuffed with Cheerios and eats them by the fistful. Peppa Pig is on TV.
I really feel his head — a lot cooler. The Tylenol we gave him earlier is working. He appears a lot extra like himself already. If I’ve to wake him each 4 to 6 hours to present him extra medication, that’d be all proper, I feel.
We have one other bottle of Tylenol at house — one my mom noticed in Wabush when she was there a number of months in the past. She purchased it as a result of she knew there was a scarcity.
The man sitting subsequent to me has a daughter who’s had a fever for a lot of days. He calls his spouse to say that there are indicators warning just one dad or mum is allowed within the ready room, however after the day they’ve had and every part they have been via, she ought to simply are available in anyway.
I do not know what they have been via.
A couple of minutes later, the mom exhibits up, and reads a chapter e book with the lady in her lap.
Around me, a choir of coughing kids, hacking in concord. I fear that if we keep right here, we’ll catch one thing. COVID-19. RSV. The flu.
Will it all the time be like this?
Is this how we stay now? Crowded emergency rooms stuffed with red-cheeked kids and terrified dad and mom?
Later, I’ll inform my mothers group chat about this expertise they usually’ll every reply with their tales of endlessly sick kids. Kids who’re catching every part, who cannot sleep via the night time. A colleague tells me the previous joke was that the Janeway is the hospital “for six kids” — a famously calm and quiet place.
But on this Saturday night time, there are a dozen or extra children ready to be seen. Is it only a unhealthy cold-and-flu season, compounded by workers shortages and the pandemic? Or has one thing modified?
Sometimes I fear that the world from earlier than is gone for good. That one night time, whereas we have been all sleeping, the previous world was changed with a brand new one that’s colder and fewer forgiving.
A person, lady and toddler seem from the again of the ready room. They should have come from someplace else within the hospital. The man carries the kid, who appears to be about the identical age as mine. They clarify to the nurse that the kid fell down and misplaced consciousness for a time.
My son is pulling tissues out of a field and dropping Cheerios on the ground. I pack up our issues and assist him into his coat. I inform the lady working the registration we’re going house.
Please, I feel, do not let him get sicker for having come right here.
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