Jul
28
Took a bit of a detour through West Virginia today. It wasn’t a planned trip, nor was it one that I enjoyed making for a number of reasons. I’ve been through West Virginia a number of times, and I can’t say any of them have been pleasant. Well, except for one brief stop on Wheeling Island on my way to Pittsburgh where I won $400 at the slot machines during a half hour stop. That visit wasn’t too terrible, but every one since then has been less than appealing.
Today’s trip wasn’t a planned one. I had intended on spending my day at the Dayton Celtic Festival when I awoke this morning, but those plans changed after I received an early morning phone call from my wife. She had just left the day before with her friend to attend a conference in Virginia and had taken both of our daughters with her. The plan was to have one watch the kids while the other attended the conference. The plan was also to stop for the evening in Charleston, WV to rest for the night. It was an 8 or 9 hour drive straight through to Virginia, so they decided to split the trip into two days to make it a bit easier to manage since there were two 4 yr old, a 9 yr old, and a soon to be 2 yr old traveling with them. Any longer than 4 hours in the car would be pushing it.
My wife called me this morning around 8am and told me that Maggie, our youngest had had a seizure during the night. She had a febrile seizure almost a year ago, and like the previous one this one came without warning. After the first one the doctor informed us that this might happen again, but it’s been over a year since the last one so we weren’t expecting this to happen again.
She took her to the emergency room in Charleston. We were told it wasn’t completely necessary to do so after the first one, but since it had been so long in between them it seemed like the right course of action. While this was happening, I was getting dressed and awaiting an update from my wife. She finally called me about an hour later. Because she didn’t have a fever when she arrived at the hospital, the doctor wouldn’t classify her seizure as febrile, so she requested the full battery of bloodwork and cat scans to rule out the usual suspects.
The doctor was also concerned that it might be encephalitis or possibly meningitis, so she also wanted to do a spinal tap. My wife had been through a spinal tap previously (it’s the only sure fire method of diagnosing MS), and wasn’t too keen on having our youngest daughter have that procedure unless it was completely necessary. The doctor agreed, so the tap was shelved until the first battery of test results came back. If there were any positive signs on the bloodwork or scans, she would order the tap.
After hearing this, I went to the computer, Googled the directions to Charleston, then started driving. It was roughly a 3 1/2 hour drive to Charleston, but I was hoping to make better time. Along the way I tried calling my wife for updates but she wasn’t answering. So I resorted to texting. I am not exactly what you’d call “skilled” when it comes to the craft of text messaging, especially since I refuse to use short hand. I’d much rather drive head first into bridge embankment than be caught using U for ‘you’. As I drove, I quickly rememberized all of the letter locations on the numbers so I no longer had to look down at the keypad while typing, so by the time I reached Chillicothe my texting skills had improved quite immensely.
Turns out it was much easier for my wife to respond to text messages than call me, especially since I knew she wouldn’t be checking her phone messages. She responded back with short messages (helping the nurse, she’s doing better, no news yet, no more seizures).
I was about an hour away when my wife called to let me know that the test results came back negative. Nothing in the bloodwork, nothing in the catscan, nothing in the urine test. Despite all of this, the doctor still wanted to do the tap just to be certain. So she gave us a choice: either sign a waiver stating that we refused treatment or allow the doctor to perform the procedure. This was when I got pissed.
If she was going to do the spinal tap anyways, why the hell not do it first? Why even bother with the other tests? And, as parents, how could we live with ourselves if we refused the treatment and then had to deal with the worst case scenario? I really didn’t want her to have the spinal tap, so I told my wife to contact our regular pediatrician and have her talk with the ER doc. If our doctor agreed it was necessary, then we’d consent to the test. About ten minutes later, I received the following text message from my wife:
phone dead going to do it
I sped the rest of the way to Charleston, making it there in just under three hours. Only problem was I didn’t get directions to the hospital; come to think of it, I didn’t even know which hospital it was. I thought my wife had called it Children’s Hospital, so I called information to see if they had the number. There wasn’t a Childrens, but there was a Women and Children’s Hospital. They connected me to that number, and I asked the switchboard operator there if my daughter had been admitted to the ER there. She had. Next, I asked for directions.
“Uuuuuuuuuuh. Let me connect you w/ security.”
Apparently only the security guard is authorized to give out the hospital’s secret location. So after a brief pause, I was connected with the security guard.
“Hi, my daughter’s been admitted to the emergency room there and I need directions to get to the hospital.”
“Uuuuuuuuuuuh (not an exaggeration), where you coming from?”
“I’m on I-64 heading East. I’m coming up on exit 67.”
“Uuuuuuuuuuuh (still not an exaggeration), what’s the road name on the exit.”
I told him.
“Uuuuuuuuuuuh (I really wish this was an exaggeration), hang on a second. (incoherent mumbling in the background) you need to get off one of the exits just over the bridge, I don’t know the name of it.”
I stopped listening at this point and hung up. Generally I’m not one to rush to judgement about people’s mental capacities, but in my current state I was picturing the guys from Deliverance sitting in the guard shack picking a banjo, thinking about how purty Jon Voight’s mouth is.
I took the first exit as I came across the bridge (the first bridge, turns out there was more than one). I didn’t see the hospital at first and was about to try information again when I saw Pennsylvania Street. I vaguely remembered the information operator mentioning the hospital was on Pennsylvania, so I had lucked out. I did a quick scan further up the road and saw the hospital.
I told the receptionist who I was and who I was there to see. She buzzed me right in (thinking back now, I was surprised she didn’t ask for ID), and I wandered back through the triage area. She didn’t give me a room number or anything, just sent me back to wander. Eventually I found a nurse who informed me that she was just finishing up her spinal tap and directed me to her bed. A few minutes later my wife and daughter returned from the tap room (I don’t know what else to call it). Both of them looked very tired, but both were very happy to see me.
She wasn’t even back in her bed when another nurse showed up at her bed informing us that she was there to take her back for her tests.
“What tests?” my wife asked.
The nurse looked puzzled. “Is this Liz?”
“No.”
“Oh, my mistake, they gave me the wrong room number.”
I was beginning to lose confidence in West Virginia’s medical system. A few minutes later, the nurse asked if she could bring our daughter something to eat (she had been up since 5am, had thrown up twice and hadn’t eaten a thing). She rattled off a list of foods: pudding, sandwiches, fruit cups, french fries. My daughter jumped at the word fries, so the nurse put the order in for her. Twenty minutes later, her food arrived. Tomato soup. Another crack forms in the shaky trust I have in WV’s medical system. Luckily there was pudding and a small ice cream cup with the luke warm bowl of soup.
This was at 12:30 pm. We would sit at the hospital for another two hours before anyone gave us any news either way regarding the spinal tap results. The results finally came back (all clear), so after the ER doc made another call to our family practitioner, she was finally released from the hospital and we got the hell out of there.
Our family doctor informed us that as long as her tests came back okay, there was no reason to cancel the trip. Besides being a little tired and hungry she was fine, so the plan was to get some lunch and then they’d continue on their trip to Virginia. I joined them for lunch at the mall near their hotel. My wife had promised Maggie that she could go to Build a Bear for being so brave at the hospital, so all of the girls made bears.
After lunch and the bear session, I walked them to their hotel, kissed them goodbye, then headed back to my car for my drive home. I made it back just before 8pm.
They called me around 10:30 to let me know that they had made it to their hotel in Virginia and that everyone was doing fine. The plan is to stay in Virginia until Saturday morning and then drive back home in the afternoon. If all goes as planned, there’ll be no need to stop in West Virginia on the trip home, thankfully.
OMG! I hope your gal is OK now…I hope you have recovered as well.
Dang, that’s the kind of thing that takes a couple of years off your life expectancy!
You still put an artfully light spin on some of the parts, which is really showing your humor and talent.
I’m getting as many people down here to read the DS as I can. Several have commented that you’re a lot funnier than me.
I have severed ties with these traitors. A shame, really, I’ll miss my sister and parents.
Yeah, it was quite a stressful drive down. The whole spinal tap thing still irritates me.