I have officially named this year (or so – it began last October with my son’s extremely early birth) The Year of the Medical Event.
Looking back on my calendar for the past several months, I’ve had 6-8 or more medical events or doctor’s appointments each month.
Have a mentioned that going to the doctor/dentist is one of my least favorite things to do? Noone could ever accuse me of having Munchausen by proxy. No sir.
And not just general doctor visits for well kid check-ups, many these have been major medical events (with their required multiple follow-up visits).
When my first two children were born male, people predicted that I would always be in the E.R. But neither of them has had a bad accident or broken bone.
Each of my 4 girls has, however, and the 5 year old has broken two bones. Some might say that I was more protective with my first kids, but that isn’t true.
My parenting style was laissez-faire from the get-go, and I have never been one to shy my kids away from skateboards, trampolines, climbing trees and the like.
My girls just seem more accident prone.
I’ve been quiet here on the blog for the month of November, mostly because I spent 3 days in the E.R., but also because I’m working on another ebook and all my writing time and mojo are going towards that effort.
Let’s see. What’s going on lately. Ah, yes. The Year of Medical Events.
My 5 year old fell out of her favorite tree and broke her arm. She’s healing nicely, thank you. And she’s wasted no time getting back into the trees. And honestly, I would rather risk the occasional broken bone than raise a couch potato.
A few weeks later, I woke up one morning knowing that something was very wrong with my baby. I took him to the E.R. that morning, waited half the day, was transferred to another hospital, where they scheduled emergency surgery to take care of his hernia, which had incarcerated. (Google it if you have a strong stomach.)
Ironically, he had an appointment just days before with a pediatric surgeon, but their office had called to cancel. I called them to reschedule (since a planned surgery, while scary, is always better than an emergent one), but their computers were down and they told me to call back, but that was on a Friday.
Guess when they called me back?
While I was sitting in the E.R. with my baby.
Yeah.
Universe, your timing sucks.
He’s doing fine, and it’s a huge relief to know that it’s all taken care of, and I no longer have to feel fear when I open his diaper, wondering how things are going to look.
The worst part of the day was that he had to fast for a few hours before the surgery. He was clawing at my shirt like a teenage boyfriend at the movies, not understanding why he couldn’t nurse.
His weight went down about 8 ounces from the whole ordeal, but he’s doing wonderfully and didn’t even require pain medication after the surgery.
Just when my husband and I (and the other children) had recovered from that, my 3 year found her finger slammed into a door jamb.
Can I just say that fingers bleed A LOT!?
This incident was seriously more stressful to me than the other two. While my husband held her and squeezed her (dangling) finger with a towel to try to stop the bleeding, I called the paramedics.
Waiting just a couple of minutes for them to arrive, I had to sit down in the grass twice to put my head between my knees to keep from fainting.
You know you have a lot of kids when one of the EMTs, no joke, shows up at your house and says with a huge grin, “Didn’t your daughter break her arm falling out of that tree over there?“.
Looking like a graceful princess, even while her finger dangles off the bone.
While doctors kept commenting on how tough Ruby was dealing with her broken arm and hospital stay, how well she dealt with the pain, they commented frequently on how Victoria handled her injury like a princess, with grace and sweetness.
Which makes sense since that’s their basic approach to life generally.
Which brings me to the title of my post.
How to get your child to take nasty medicine.
The doctors prescribed a 10-day round of antibiotics to prevent osteomyelitis, an infection to the bone (which is a possible complication when bone is exposed, as was the case with her finger).
I’m the last person who wants to give her kids prophylactic antibiotics, and it didn’t help that Vic screamed like an impaled piglet when we tried to give it to her.
I wondered if it was worth the continuing trauma of this (especially since half the dose was spat back at us), until we met with the orthopedist who, before saying hello to us in the exam room, asked if she was taking the antibiotics.
After researching how nasty osteomyelitis is, how the treatment requires weeks or months of IV antibiotics to clear it, I figured this 10 day run was the lesser of two evils.
But how to get the meds in her?
After brainstorming a few possibilities, I ended up measuring out the meds using the plastic syringe and then pouring it into a tiny demitasse cup (the girls used it for their American Girl dolls). I then placed it on the table and told Victoria to drink it.
And she did.
Ah, removing the power struggle and putting it in a cute cup did the trick. She’s been taking it for a week with no struggle.
You’re welcome.
As weird as it sounds, we get ADHD meds down Daniel with M&M’s.
And boo for emergency surgery! My kiddo had his inguinal hernia repaired the second he was old enough for anesthesia.
Not weird at all! I used M&Ms to potty train my second child. (One for sitting, two for “results”.) No shame in it. I actually did give her a fruit roll-up after the first couple of doses, but she didn’t need the incentive by the second day.
I do wish we had done the surgery earlier. I was too concerned about his weight being low. It was just too scary for me to think about having such a tiny baby under anesthesia. In the end my hand was forced, but it worked out ok. Thankfully he slept almost all day (clearly he was lethargic and something was wrong, but I’ll take a sleeping baby over a screaming one!) and only cried when they put the IV in.