Yesterday was a pretty big day.
In more ways than one.
The good doctor decided to push Ivy’s Vancomycin up to a full dose.
By the completion of that dose my girl was puffy and bright red and she had a rash all over her trunk, arms and the tops of her legs. Her heart rate sky rocketed and she was generally cranky and out of sorts for the rest of the day. By night fall she was exhausted.
Apparently she had a reaction to the antibiotic, known as Red Man Syndrome.
They slowed it down and it’s all good now. Just a little flushing when it is infused.
When we arrived at the hospital, Ivy’s ear was swabbed again and this afternoon, on top of the MRSA, she now has pseudomonas.
Again.
Initially, the paed thought that we may be able to go home on more ear drops and hydrogen peroxide, tomorrow sometime but word on the street is that my favourite infectious diseases doctor (not) is coming to see us to inform us we will need to stay longer and have more IV antibiotics.
More of the same and some new additions too.
Ivy’s paed knew better than to come back and break this news to me, so he sent his underling to watch me totally lose the plot.
Cabin fever?
You bet!
Ivy is as bright and chirpy as the brightest and chirpiest bird you have seen in the obligatory forest scene in a Disney movie.
She wants to dance. She wants to draw, she wants to line buttons up and stack them and sort them but all of these things don’t include an IV drip and her arm strapped into a rigid aeroplane wing.
The *bleeping* imed machine keeps sounding off in a monotonous “beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeep”, every time she moves her arm and it is driving me insane!
She cries everytime I ask her to straighten the thing out and this coupled with the beeping is sending me batty and into a world of ‘not my finest moments’.
I need to get out.
She needs to get out.
I need to not be with her for a while.
She needs some time out from me.
I need to see the sky and breathe in some air that isn’t reversed air conditioning.
She needs to see the sky and the grass and go for a run in too big gumboots, with her brother and the small sausage dog, who probably isn’t so small anymore.
Lets face it, we are not inside people. We need wide open spaces and wilderness to feel right with the world. We don’t do cooped up very well, either of us.
I love her dearly and am so sorry that this is happening but living with Ivy up close and personal 24 hours a day in a room smaller than some people’s bathroom, well, it’s hard.
I’m still waiting to see how much longer we will be here, with my rapidly numbing backside.
There is little point in standing and walking around, it just makes everything seem smaller.
The silver lining in all of this is that I won’t have to force the ear drops on Ivy.
At least there’s that.
Originally posted at Three Ring Circus