They loaded Bay into her second ambulance of the day and transported her to Minneapolis Children's Hospital. She was brought in through the Emergency Room where they did their own exam while they tried to find an appropriate room for her. Here we sat for about 2 hours. Children's is a teaching hospital so we had med students, residents and attending physicians all take a peak and do an exam. It was tedious and tiresome sitting there waiting but even worse to have to answer the same history questions for a dozen new people. We were heartbroken and waiting for answers that didn't seem to come fast enough and meanwhile our daughter lay there almost unresponsive and paralyzed on her right side. The doctors, nurses, and social worker who saw Bailey in the ER told us that they agreed with the Emergency Room staff at the Fairview Southdale Hospital - it was most likely a Conversion Disorder.
They finally found her a room at about 10:30 PM and moved us up to the floor.
On the med/surg floor she was surrounded by an array of toddlers and babies with varying degrees of medical problems. I am quite sure she was the closest thing to an adult they had seen in a long time. We met our doctor the next morning, he was a man named Justin Kirven. He is an internal medicine physician that primarily sees patients in the hospital. He said that he had reviewed the CT and had spoken to the staff that had spent time with Bailey in the Southdale ER, the Children's ER and overnight on the med/surg floor and was pretty positive that she had not had a stroke - besides the CT scan was clean so there was no reason to suspect a stroke. He agreed with all of the previous opinions - Bailey had no "organic" medical issue - she had a Conversion Disorder.
Dr. Kirven said that the plan was to have a Psychologist and a Neurologist examine her before they made this the formal diagnosis. They were supposed to come see her that afternoon (Thursday). Well, that never happened. We sat and sat and sat and waited and waited and waited and nothing happened.
We did have many visitors that day which made it a bit more bearable. At least we weren't waiting alone. The down side to all of the visitors is that they all want to hear the play-by-play from the beginning. Once hearing the story they all have their own opinions of what the doctors should do and when. While I don't mind hearing these opinions it is hard to listen when I am already frustrated with the doctors and feeling so helpless. And on top of that none of the folks with the opinions have any real idea of how it feels to have a doctor tell you that your daughter, who you thought was really well adjusted, was so stressed out that it was making her paralyzed. How do you really deal with that? All I could think is "how could I not know" and "what did we do wrong?" It was heartbreaking and frustrating and very overwhelming.
We did have a nice surprise on Thursday evening. A group of Bailey's friends came to visit and she LIT UP. She sat up in her bed and started chatting them up like there was nothing wrong. She had been talking most of the day but in a drowsy sort of confused way of a person who had just had a stroke. Suddenly she was a clear as a bell! She did have some aphasia so some of the words didn't quite come out right but she was trying. She asked for paper and a pen and proceeded to write a thank you note to her friends WITH HER LEFT HAND! It was so exciting.
Here was a girl who had no feeling in either her right leg or her right arm. Her facial muscles in the right side of her face were drooping and yet she acted like nothing was wrong. It was a true testament to the nature of our girl - stubborn, determined and very social. So, while we had a bad day of waiting, we at least ended it on a positive note.
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