Microwaves, Rectangles, and Ellen

News flash: I've been spelling and saying bronchcoscopy wrong this whole time. Carry on.

Anyway. What a long, long, long day. We were at Children's from 11 until 8:30 tonight. The procedure itself took 10 minutes.

We got there and got J weighed, measured and changed into his lovely purple hospital gown with koalas riding rocketships (yeah, I can't make this stuff up). They gave him some versed which knocked him for a loop. The poor kiddo was hiccuping and saying, "All *hic* done *hic* mommy" while batting at things in the air. I had to hold back tears when I kissed him goodbye and they wheeled him away.

I had time to walk into the parent waiting area, register, battle with the soda machine that wouldn't give me my much-needed Diet Coke, read about 20 pages in my book and the dr. was out already. He showed me pictures of J's airway. He said it's definitely smaller than a "typical" kid and there's signs of reflux. Other than that, nothing to worry about. The dr. feels because of the smaller airway, he's just more sensitive and will probably continue to have the episodes until he grows and his airway gets bigger.

I waited for about 45 more minutes before they brought me back to see Jackson. I heard him as soon as I entered the recovery area. Coughing, struggling to breathe, crying, wheezing. It was terrible. They decided to give him racemic epi (the fancy new word I learned for "breathing treatment") to calm the airway. He was noticeably better after the treatment, but still having strider and neck retraction.

After his breathing was calmed a bit, the major source of upset for him was the IV. He'd cry and say, "rectangle off". Usually when he's admitted it's the pulse ox on his toe that causes the distress.

After a bit, we were taken to a recovery pod, where we stayed from about 1 until 8:00. He was given IV steroids while everyone went back and forth as to whether or not we should stay the night. I ended up convincing them that since we're so close to the hospital, I can run him back if I needed to. By the time the decision was made to let us go, he was breathing normally with no evidence of neck retraction or strider.

Once again, without her knowledge, Ellen DeGeneres comes to the rescue. After we had been in the recovery pod for a bit, with lots of crying without much let up, J looked at me at 3:05 and said, "rectangle Ellen?" How he knew it was time for Ellen to be on, I have no idea, my guess is it was just wishful thinking on his part. I found the show and he was content for the first time that day (except during commercials where he would cry "rectangle Ellen!" until the show came back). The nurse came in and was happy he was finally calming down and I told her it was all due to Ellen. She thought it was funny that J would rather watch Ellen than cartoons.

This morning he's totally breathing fine, but I kept him home from school so I can watch him (just in case).

Object(s) du Jour: The Thomas fringies, the "Cars holder" (he's more interested in holding the DVD case to the movie than watching the movie itself) and a picture from the internet of a Doritos delivery truck.

One day last week, a Doritos truck was making a delivery to a store near our house. The end of the road was blocked, so the truck had to park right in front of our house. J loved it because it's a rectangular truck with "triangles" on the side. Every day since, he looks out the window and asks for the truck. I Googled and found a picture of the exact truck. I printed it, protected it with packing tape and the picture rode along with him for his surgery. The nurses in recovery wanted to know why he needed a picture of a Doritos truck. lol