Racing to The Pediatric Emergency Room

My dad’s arms were wrapped firmly around me as he held me while talking to the lady at the desk at the entrance to the pediatric emergency room.  About twenty minutes earlier I had passed out in an elevator on the way out of Dr. Monroe’s office.  The vampire lady in her lab had just sucked out her usual four tubes of blood from the crook of my arm. When she was done she gave me a unicorn sticker, and I stepped into the elevator.  The next thing I remembered being aware of was my dad leaning over me yelling my name in a panic.  He had picked me up in his arms like a baby, not the ten-year-old girl I was, and carried me out to the car.  I didn’t fully wake up until we were racing down the turnpike toward the hospital.

Answering all the Admission Questions at the Pediatric Emergency Room

 “How old is she?” asked the lady at the main entrance of the pediatric emergency room.

“She’s ten,” my dad answered.  The lady did a double take then closed her mouth and proceeded to answer a bunch more questions.

As my dad held me I could feel his shirt getting warm and wet with sweat under my skin.  He was rocking me from side to side and patting my back.  His voice was hard-edged, but not angry, it was full of anxiety as he answered all the lady’s questions.

 The lady asked my dad my full name, date of birth, address, my mom and dad’s names, and why I was there.  Then she wanted to see a little plastic card with letters and numbers on it that was in my dad’s wallet. She called it my “insurance card”.

As my dad held me I could feel his shirt getting warm and wet with sweat under my skin,

My dad gave her all the info she needed. She asked a whole lot of questions like our address, my full name, my parents’ names, what happened today, and everything.

“Do you want a wheelchair for her?” The lady asked.

Waiting in the Waiting Room of The Pediatric Emergency Room

“No that’s all right, I’ll just hold her,” my dad told the lady, and I swear his grip on me tightened.  I just hugged him back as much as I could, which wasn’t much, because my whole body felt like partially set Jell-O. At least I was at the hospital now where they could help figure out what was really wrong with me and explain it to my parents.  That way my parents would stop accusing me of having an eating disorder.

“The waiting room is down that hall on the right side,” the lady pointed out to my dad.  “You should only need to wait there for a few minutes.  Just until the triage nurse calls you in to do her assessment.”

My dad carried me into the waiting room of the pediatric emergency room. It had video game systems, coloring pages, and some dolls and teddy bears to play with. We were only in there for five minutes tops. My dad just kept a hold of me on his lap the whole time.  He didn’t say much, but his forehead was all pinched up and tense.  I was nervous too.  I had hope, I thought maybe I was going to finally find out what was wrong with me and get it fixed.

Getting Triaged in the Pediatric Emergency Room

When the triage nurse came to the door of the waiting room and called my name I was still lying listless in my dad’s lap.  He picked me back up and followed the triage nurse to a little cubicle.  Then he sat down in the chair with me in his lap.

The triage nurse wrapped an infant-size blood pressure cuff around my arm.  

“It’s going to get super tight and then release,” she told me.  “Just try to keep your arm still.”

I didn’t bother to tell her I had been getting my blood pressure checked every day for the last month. Instead, I just pretended that she had told me something new, and nodded my head.

What did surprise me were the numbers that popped up.  The machines usually said something like 95/60.  This time it said 66/51.  As soon as my blood pressure registered on the screen the triage nurse began intently studying her computer looking for an available bed in the critical care area of the pediatric emergency room.

My Dad Blaming Everything on My Non-Existent Eating Disorder

“Tell me a little bit about what’s been going on, Dad,” she said.

My dad proceeded to explain all about my “eating disorder” and how I passed out

“I don’t have an eating disorder,” I tried to explain. My voice sounded far away and soft,  “The reason I haven’t been eating is that my stomach hurts too bad and it makes me throw up.”

“We’ll look into that,” the triage nurse told me.

“Her pediatrician has been following her closely. There is absolutely nothing physically wrong with her. All of a sudden she developed an eating disorder and just stopped eating.” my dad cut in.

“Well, we will still have to do our own testing as well,” the triage nurse explained.

My dad just sighed and shook his head in disgust.

Getting a Bed in the Critical Care Area of the Pediatric Emergency Room

The triage nurse had my dad pick me back up and carry me past the doors that said “General Pediatric Emergency Room Treatment Area, and around the corner to doors that read, “Critical Care Pediatric Emergency Room Treatment Area.  She used her badge to buzz us through.

There were tons of people wearing scrubs with stethoscopes swinging around their necks rushing around.  The halls were lined with lots of rooms with sliding glass doors.  We stopped at one of the rooms and went inside, my dad put me on the stretcher.

Watching My Heart on TV in the Pediatric Emergency Room

After the triage nurse left, a patient care tech came in right away and put stickers all over my chest and tummy, then she hooked the stickers up to wires. The patient care tech connected the wires and stickers to a plug in a TV screen above my bed.  It made big spiky lines that she told me were a picture of my heart.  She also put another infant’s blood pressure cuff on my arm.  My arm was too skinny even for the toddler one. Then she showed me a special sticker.  It was long and had a picture of a teddy bear holding balloons on it.

“I’m going to wrap this around your finger,” she told me, “Pick a finger.”

I held out my pointer finger on my right hand.

“That will tell us how much oxygen you have in your blood,” she explained as she wrapped it around and stuck it on. Both the oxygen sticker and the blood pressure cuff also had wires hooked up to the TV screen with the picture of my heart. I could watch the screen and see what my body was doing.  My finger with the sticker on it glowed red. I called it my ET finger. It was kind of neat.

Telling My Sickness Story a Trillion Times

After she had me hooked up to all the monitors, the patient care tech took out a tray of blood testing supplies. She used another one of those butterfly needles.  After multiple pokes, hot packs, and moving the needle around in my arm she drew about seven tubes of blood.  The tech called it “drawing a rainbow”.  Then she turned on the TV which was an actual TV, not a monitor, and found SpongeBob SquarePants.

“Try to rest, Dad’s right here with you, and your assigned nurse should be coming in soon,” she told me. 

My assigned nurse came in about fifteen minutes later. She asked a bunch of the same questions that everyone else had been asking all over.

After literally thousands of trips to the pediatric emergency room, I have learned that your parents have to tell the doctors your whole story about a trillion times over each visit.

My dad answered most of the questions.  I kept trying to butt in and attempt to explain that I did not have an eating disorder. But nobody listens to ten-year-olds.  Nobody ever listens to ten-year-olds when their parents are saying the exact opposite.  It will take pigs to fly for someone to listen to an emaciated ten-year-old who is saying they’re not anorexic when their parents and medical records are screaming “eating disorder”. 

Blowing Bubbles at Mr. Bananas in the Pediatric ER

That’s why I was so shocked when the attending doctor came in about two hours later.  He had blond hair that was balding and a brightly colored bow tie.  Wrapped round his stethoscope was a monkey fingerling (an animal toy that you wrap around your finger and can push a button to get it to make sounds).  I had already decided he was a good doctor before he started talking.

“That’s an awesome unicorn on your shirt,” he told me.

“Unicorns are my favorite,” I told him. Then I showed him the unicorn sticker I’d earned right before passing out and being rushed to the pediatric emergency room.

“I’m here to help figure out how to make you feel better,” the doctor told me.

I liked that he was talking to me and not my dad.  It was my body after all.

“First, I need to listen to your lungs, so I need you to look at my fingerling, Mr. Bananas, and take a deep breath in.  Then blow it all back out, like you’re blowing bubbles at Mr. Bananas.”

Low Electrolytes and a Jiggling Heart

After the doctor used his stethoscope to listen to my chest, back, sides, and tummy, he pulled up a stool on wheels.

“Your labs came back,” he told me.

All of a sudden, I felt like a tire that just got pierced with a pointy, sharp nail.  I could feel all the hope draining out of me.  So much for the pediatric emergency room being the answer to my prayers. This was the part where he was going to tell me that my labs came back normal and physically, I was fine.  Next, he would tell me everything was all in my head and I must have an eating disorder.

That’s not what he said. He continued talking.

“You have critically low levels of something called electrolytes in your blood. When those electrolytes get very low they can make you very sick. Right now it’s stopping your heart from pumping the right way. The top of your heart is just jiggling instead of pumping blood through. It’s also making your heart beat too fast. It’s called Atrial Fibrillation” The doctor explained. Then he pointed at the wavy lines on the screen above my bed like I had any idea of what they meant.

It’s More Than an Eating Disorder

“Can we fix it?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, we can. We are going to put bags filled with electrolytes through that IV in your arm to raise your levels up and get your heart back to normal,” explained the pediatric emergency room doctor.

“Are the rest of her labs okay?” My dad asked.

“Her red blood cells, hemoglobin, and hematocrit, the three main values we use to check for anemia are so low that if they drop even several points more she will need a blood transfusion. In addition to the anemia, her labs are indicating acute kidney failure,”  The doctor told my dad.

“This is all stuff that can be explained by her eating disorder, right?” my dad asked.

I could feel anger bubbling up from deep inside me. Why did my parents have to continuously insist that everything was about my non-existent eating disorder?

“Everything I have described could be a result of starvation, but other tests we ran showed that she has some other disease process going on.

I wanted to get in my dad’s face and yell, “I told you so!” Instead, I lay there limply in the bed as the doctor explained that I barely had any bowel sounds. He also said that they had checked my blood for signs of inflammation and the two tests they’d done came back off-the-charts high.

My Insides Telling the Real Story in the Pediatric Emergency Room

“Her sed rate is 234. A normal sed rate for a child is less than ten. On top of that, her c-reactive protein is 549. A normal C-reactive protein level is less than 8.

“Can stress and anxiety increase C-reactive protein?” my dad asked.

I wanted to scream.

“It can, but never usually to that extreme. When I saw the results of the sed rate and c-reactive protein, I added another test on, called an ANA titer.  That test came back super high as well.   This means her body’s immune system which is supposed to fight off infections, may be fighting off her own body as well.  When she gets to the floor we will have a few different specialists look at her as well.”

I just lay back in the bed looking at my unicorn sticker feeling so relieved that finally, people were seeing proof that I really wasn’t making this stuff up. My insides were finally telling my story for me. Dr. Monroe just hadn’t had the right tools to get them to talk.

Starting Treatment in the Pediatric ER

What’s that mean?” asked my dad skeptically.

“It means we have our work cut out for us.” The pediatric emergency room doctor explained.

I watched my dad carefully to see if he would listen to the doctor, but I knew my dad, once he made up his mind about something there was no changing it. He was determined to say that all my problems were in my head because that was the theory my parents had been going with for the last two years and now it was too late to change it.

My dad just nodded.

“How do you feel right now?” the pediatric emergency room doctor asked me.

“Nauseous,” I told him.

“I am going to order you some medicine that will also go right through that IV in your arm.  It will make you feel less nauseous.”  He told me. “

Thank you,” I told him with relief, wondering to myself why no one had given me a medication like that months earlier.

Leaving The Pediatric Emergency Room to go to the Regular Medical Floor

My dad just nodded.

The doctor decided to admit me to the hospital. After a long wait for a bed to become available, A man in gray scrubs came down to the pediatric emergency room and brought me up to my room on the pediatric general medicine floor.

With the doctor listing all this proof that stuff was wrong with me, I felt like I was seeing bright lights appearing in the distance. My tummy wasn’t moving the way it should. There really was something wrong with my stomach and my insides, and this hospital was going to try and figure out what it was so that they could fix me. They were even giving me medicine that was making me less nauseous.  They were focusing on my body not a non-existent eating disorder. I should have passed out in an elevator months ago.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      he