A - Z Blogging Challenge H is for ....

H is for hospitals

Over the early years we got very familiar with a number of hospitals.

My first real experience of being in hospital was when I was admitted at just under 30 weeks pregnant with blood pressure of 128/178 although I had zero symptoms and it was a late routine appointment that spotted it. I was kept in 4 days then sent home. Less than 48 hrs later I was in an emergency situation having had an abruption at home at just under 31 wks & had Little Man by emergency c section - my little 2lb 9 man. Despite this rough start he did very well in PICU & SCBU & was home after 6 weeks.

At 8 weeks old he got RSV, double pneumonia & suspected meningitis. We nearly lost him. The local hospital's SCBU had been closed the previous year so they didn't have small enough needles to get lines in him or to give him oxygen. the doctor who worked on him that night is my hero, he faught to get lines in & despite it being very traumatic & hearing our baby cry properly for the 1st time, he saved him and the young nurse Amy who stood bagging him & giving him cardiac massage until a specialist transfer team arrived from Great Ormond Street who intubated him & put him in a special pod to take him to Great Ormond St intensive care unit.

Next stop was a strangulated hernia at 16 wks old, again an emergency transfer to GOSH for emergency surgery.

Since then he's had 3 more hernia ops at the local hospital.  

First one was aged 4 - he reacted very badly to the anaesthetic. The operating theatres were in a different building to the children's ward and normally patients are taken through the under ground tunnel between buildings. This was closed for building works so we walked the 100 yards. When he came out of theatre we could hear him screaming as we came out of the lifts. We were greeted with him being restrained by not 1 but 2 nurses, who he was trying to kick, bite, thump, head butt anything  really. He was also trying to rip the IV out of his hand. I picked him up & he calmed down dissolving in sobs. He wouldn't go to his dad or on the trolley, he also refused to let me sit in a wheel chair with him, so I carried him. At the doors I turned to walk back to the children's building but was stopped & told we had to be transported in an ambulance right round the one way hospital system. Little Man heard the word ambulance and flipped, I could barely hold him, I was bitten, scratched, hair pulled, all while he was screaming not to make him go in the ambulance. I was physically shoved in. In hind sight I should have just turned & walked but I think I was so focused on not dropping him I couldn't see that. Once out of the ambulance he calmed down. He split his internal stitches with all the stress so a few weeks later the hernia was back.

The next 2 hernia ops were a lot less traumatic and done at the sane time as we knew what to expect and how to prepare him better. He still went a little mad after the anaesthetic but we were there as he woke and they had a sedative ready and waiting!

He is petrified of ambulances and hospitals - I firmly believe he remembers all the interventions in his first 16 weeks.