Kalten's first ER visit

We had a little scare with Kalten last night. We ended up in the emergency room, but everything's fine now.

It started out with a fit. He wanted in the kitchen when I was making lunch, but he kept being naughty and getting into stuff, so I put him back over the gate, and he threw a big fit, not like him at all. All-out screaming and laying on the floor, but it didn't last long.

Later, we had to go to the post office, and while he was strapped into the car, he kept saying "rig!" and holding his tummy. Rig means cold, I don't know why he pronounces it that way. I think he meant that it hurt. He was also saying ow off and on.

When we got home, he just wanted to sit on the couch and watch TV. Paul went to school, and suddenly Kalten got a little more urgent in his owies. I finally thought to feel his hernia, which was hard! I couldn't push his guts back in like normal, so I took him down to my parents' house. Mom felt it and called my aunt, who is a nurse. She said he needed to be seen right away. Meanwhile I had put a call in to the phone nurse, and when she called me back, she said the same thing. A strangulated hernia requires emergency surgery. When I heard that, I freaked out. My baby can't need surgery!

We waited for Paul to get home, and while we were waiting, Kalten was playing as usual, just holding his belly and not letting us touch it. It was almost time for Paul to get home, so I was getting Kalten ready to go, and I felt one more time. This time it was soft! It had fixed itself, but he still was sensitive about letting us touch it, so we decided to still take him in.

I got major deja vu on the way to the ER because suddenly there were red and blue flashing lights behind us. We pulled over, and the cop flew by on his way somewhere else, THANK GOODNESS. Kalten fell asleep in the car and woke up as we were checking in.

We got into a room right away, it was a quiet night. When the doctor came in, she didn't take any time to get Kalten to warm up to her, she sat on the rolly doctor stool and rolled over, and it made the most awful screeching noise and scared Kalten, who was already a little worried. Then she tried to lift up his shirt and put her hands on him, and that was the end of it. Every time he saw her, he cried and cuddled in closer to me. All the nurses and other doctors were fine. He was a little wary, but not all-out belligerent.

She sent us for x-rays to make sure there was no blockage, and Kalten refused to cooperate. We had to pull his pants down so the snap was out of the way, and he would not sit or stand still. To make things worse, I couldn't be in the room because of the baby. Paul and one of the x-ray techs had to hold him down. They gave him a little Beanie Baby lion, which he refused at first, and then cuddled.

The doctor told us he would need surgery because it might happen again and to make an appointment with his regular pediatrician. On the way home, we stopped at "Yellow M" (can you guess?) since we hadn't eaten dinner.

His regular pediatrician said since it's fine now he doesn't need surgery and that it might not even happen again his whole life. If it starts happening more, then we'll do a surgery consult, but as of now it's not even a problem. That made me happy because nobody wants to see their kid go through surgery, even one as simple as that. It also made me mad because we really can't afford to drop twenties all the time just to hear that everything's fine, which could have been said last night in the ER.

Deja vu again, because that's exactly what happened when I was pregnant with him and had my hernia. ER doc sent me to surgery consult, and the surgeon said "I won't operate on a pregnant woman, ER doc knows that." Schhhhhp, that's the sound of money going down the drain.

At least we know everything's okay. We can be thankful for that.