More of the hospital story....

In a way, being told that Abbie needed to spend the night at the hospital was a bit of a relief. We knew she would be monitored by machines more precise than Mommy and Daddy's hearing.

As almost all of her medical care staff noted, Abbie is a great patient. She doesn't fidget when the doctors, nurses, medical assistants, nursing assistants, respiration therapists, etc. want to listen to her heart, her lungs, and poke at her belly. She willingly let the nurse put the monitor stickers on her chest and allowed the pulse/ox monitor to be attached to her finger. [The story was completely different between 9 PM and 8 AM. She fought the nurse who came in to reattach the monitors when they came undone while she was sleeping. She screamed and fought the RT who came in twice during the middle of the night to administer the inhaled medicine. Sometimes it's reassuring to see that our little Abbie is not 100% passive; she can be quite assertive when she's annoyed.]

Mommy and Daddy's favorite part of this experience was watching the health care workers' reactions when Abbie started to mimic their movements. When the intake doctor came over to the ER to discuss the process for admitting Abbie to hospital, she was using her hands to gesture while talking. Abbie watched her carefully and then started imitating every hand gesture the doctor made. I couldn't see Abbie imitating the doctor; I just saw the doctor get a little flustered and lose her concentration before she explained that Abbie was copying all of her gestures.

The worst part of this experience was the food. It's truly awful. Not only is it not tasty, it's not the healthful food one would expect an institution concerned with children's health to serve. Among the things Abbie was served were Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, toasted white bread with vegetable oil spread, French toast sticks (some sort of coated bread cut into sticks - not discernible French Toast) served with Table Syrup. Ingredients of Table Syrup include corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, coloring, and a bunch of chemicals; not included is any maple. She was also served a gel dessert imported from Thailand, an English muffin which was neither toasted nor warmed, peas and carrots which were cold by the time they made it to Abbie, canned pears, and canned peaches. For snacks they had goldfish crackers, pudding packs, gelled fruit pieces, and graham crackers; string cheese, applesauce, and apple pieces were available but since they were kept in the fridge they could only be retrieved by medical staff. Almost none of these items would be completely awful on its own, but looked at in their entirety it's appalling how few fruits and veggies were even offered. Mommy went for a walk to the Metropolitan Market on Sunday to get some carrots, apples, and bananas.

We are now home and Abbie is much better. Abbie requested pancakes for breakfast this morning so she and Mommy made pancakes and used organic milk, unbleached flour, a little bit of unprocessed sugar, and served them with real maple syrup. Later this morning we saw the pediatrician who has decided not to label the episode as "asthma" since asthma is a chronic condition and this was a single episode. If it turns out that Abbie has respiratory problems with every cold, then we may have an asmthatic child. Meanwhile, we have an inhaler and will continue to give Abbie 2 puffs every 6 hours until she's well.