Monday, April 27, 2009

Back to Work: 7 Days & Counting.

I have one week left until I am "back to work". Each day is jam packed full of tasks that must be completed before I get back into the 9 to 5, or else...or else the world will spontaneously combust, or something like that. This week's schedule is not for the faint of heart:

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Monday am: Take Max to Joseph Brant Hospital for baseline bloodwork
Monday pm: Go to Ellisa's mom's funeral

Tuesday am: Introduce Max's IBI therapist to daycare staff (Brian's 1st day working with Max at daycare)
Tuesday pm: Get Max and myself new healthcards (ours expire on Thursday)
Tuesday night: Go to Autism coaching class (3.5 hour session)

Wednesday am: Coffee with friend
Wednesday pm: Take Max to therapy

Thursday am: My birthday! Cam's birthday
Thursday pm: Take Max to Erinoak for his Autism wait list assessment (try not to lose it as yet another team of "experts" poke him with a stick to prove once again that he is Autistic)

Friday am: One last trip to mall to get work clothes
Friday pm: Take Max to therapy and have visit from Halton Support Services to help me fill out their mountain of paperwork so I can get on the 2 year wait list for Special Services at Home funding.

Saturday: Get my hair done maybe? Laundry!

Sunday: Try to get everything organized for my first week back.

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As you can see from the schedule, today we took Max to the hospital to get blood taken so his paediatrician can run a baseline to see if there is anything out of wack with Max, chromosomal abnormalities, deficiencies, and the like. We knew getting blood from him would be a challenge, so it was decided that we would bring him to the hospital when his doctor was on call so he could be sedated.

The entire day ended up being a complete sh!t show. For some reason the lab techs did not understand that Max was supposed to be sedated, nor did they have any clue as to how to handle a 3 year old child with Autism. They tried to wrap Max up in a blanket and hold him down to take his blood. He screamed and cried, and I almost passed out from the stress of it all. After about a minute of this I told them to stop and that if they weren't going to sedate him then we would just call it a day. They called his nurses in, realized I hadn't been lying to them when I said he was supposed to be sedated, and decided that we should sedate him and then they would come back. Great. We had already been there for 2 hours and Max was starting to climb the walls. Scott was getting super stressed (he had taken a vacation day for this), so I told him to go home and I would wait for the sedative to kick in. Turns out Max has a very high tolerance to sedatives, so even after they gave him a second dose, it still took him over 2 hours to conk out.

Two more visits from the lab techs and still no dice, or rather, no blood. Poor kid was tortured needlessly and locked up in a hospital room for over 5 hours on the most beautiful day of the year so far. I took him home, his arms covered in bruises, completely woozy from the drugs, all for naught. I'm not sure what the hell we are going to do now, we didn't get the blood we needed to run the tests, and it is clear that he will have to be put under a general anesthetic if they hope to have any luck getting a sample from him. I am kicking myself for putting him through this - I should have stopped it right at the very beginning of the day when the lab techs clearly didn't understand how to work with a child, let alone an Autistic one. Sadly, I also didn't get out of the hospital in time to go to my friend's mom's funeral service, so I wasn't able to pay my respects.

Note to self: this is not the way to spend one of the last days of your maternity leave before going back to work.

3 comments:

  1. Oh my god, that is awful. Way beyond the run of the mill hospital incompetence that I've come to expect. That poor little guy. And poor you!

    I hope you had some leftover carrot cake when you got home.

    Here's hoping the rest of the week shapes up better.

    xoxoJ.

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  2. I had leftover carrot cake, half a bottle of wine and a sandwich. In that order. Or maybe the wine was first...

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  3. It's days like this that you really just have to remind yourself of all the blessings you DO have. (Great husband, great kids, great family, over 5 pounds lost and the best highlights in Oakville.)

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