It Was A Long Night

It was a terrible, awful, no good, very bad night.

It started at roughly 6:15 when Matthew's nose began to bleed. Troy looked at the paperwork which stated that it was an EMERGENCY if we saw fresh blood coming from our recently dissected child's mouth or nose.

I ended up on the phone with an on call doctor at the hospital where we'd had the surgery done. He told me, approximately five times, that he didn't work with our surgeon. "You need to call your surgeon."

"I can't reach his surgeon, it's after hours."

"Well, I don't work with him."

"Well, okay, what would you suggest that I do?"

"I guess just take him to your nearest ER if you want. That's probably what your surgeon would tell you," he finally supplied.

Guess and probably and if I want are not words I want to hear when my son is eleven hours post op and his nose is dripping fresh blood which my paperwork says is an EMERGENCY. It would have been helpful to me if he'd said, "Hmm, sounds like he's going to wind up back in surgery so you should go to your local ER prepared to be there all night." Or. "Hey, he should probably be checked out but it's also probably not a big deal." Those are probablies I can handle. So I hung up the phone and called a different on call doctor. He told me to go to Walmart and buy nasal spray and call it a night.

All the while, Matthew was sitting on Troy's lap sobbing uncontrollably. He'd been eating fine all day but had suddenly refused to eat, drink or even swallow his saliva. High times.

Then, a giant fleshy boogery thing came out of his nostril, followed by a very exciting pool of blood. But, with the escape of lingering adenoid tissue/blood booger/whatever the heck it was, his nose stopped bleeding.

So I went to Walmart.

Then I cried in the Walmart parking lot because I was plumb tired and Matthew wouldn't stop crying and the doctors who get paid the big bucks couldn't agree on what we should do and I was expected to make a decision and WHAT IF HE DIED.

I'm not dramatic at all.

When I got home, Troy squirted some spray in Matthew's nose. We gave him his meds. He sobbed and gagged and spit medication on my sweatshirt. So we put him to bed. He was asleep within minutes despite the fact that he'd taken an almost three hour nap earlier in the day.

I checked on him when I went to bed and he had a layer of sticky, white foam all over his chin, neck, and pajamas. He was snoring terrible loud and with every snore, more foam was flying out of his mouth. So then, again with all the WHAT IF HE DIES? We moved him into my bed and Troy moved to the couch. And Matthew snored (LOUD!) all night long.

And he tossed.

And he turned.

And he moaned.

And he groaned.

And praise the Lord he did sleep through the entire night because, if only one of us was going to sleep, at least it was the kid with the horrible sore throat.

Because I, on the other hand, did not sleep much at all. I saw every single hour of the night tick by on the clock. 10:30. 11:44. 12:52. 1:18. 2:42. 3:31. 4:48. 5:24. 6:47. Or something like that. At one point, I groggily forgot that it was Matthew in bed next to me snoring like a grizzly bear in the dead of winter. Thinking that it was Troy, I almost punched my poor, unsuspecting, tonsilless son in the head to get him to shut up. (I wouldn't normally punch my husband, either, but I'd never heard snoring like this. At least not quite so close to my ear. It was phenomenal.)

So, needless to say, I was very tired this morning.

Which was unfortunate because today has been a challenge. See, when Dude's Lortab wears off--which it does about an hour before I can give him more--it's kind of like taming a crocodile. If it was a highly emotional croc who also recently had his tonsils removed.