Sunday, November 20, 2011

Hospital Visits as a Measure of Progress?

Ava and I were back at the ER Friday night for croup again. Friday was Michael's birthday. I sent Daddy home to spend the evening trying to make Michael's (small family) birthday celebration as much like it would have been as possible.

Cons: Well, those are pretty obvious. First, Ava couldn't breathe and needed a steroid to calm things down. Second, it was happening on Michael's birthday.

Pros: It was a mildly interesting fact that I was spending the evening in the exact same hospital that I had been in four years earlier.

Also, it gave me a chance to really see how much progress Ava's made with her sensory issues since our last trip to the hospital (almost exactly 7 weeks ago). Wow! The difference was amazing.

Last time Ava screamed when they weighed and measured her. She screamed when they took her temperature and measured her oxygen levels. She screamed when they took her blood pressure and examined her. She screamed when taking her medicine.

This time she was great. She was a little nervous and wiggly, and cried a little occasionally, but overall she handled everything fairly well. She was even charming with strangers. She was being cute and trying to be funny and enjoying the attention. This is the same child that used to act like direct eye contact from a stranger was an assault. Oddly enough, this trip to the ER was a huge way to track some pretty amazing OT progress.

(And we were sent home without an overnight stay or breathing treatments necessary, so this trip was much more successful than the last one. Hurray for not waiting until things were absolutely critical this time.)

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