To the ER We Go

I am beginning to feel a bit like a yo-yo.  Home.  ER.  Home.  ER.

After a great report from the Orthopedist on Monday, we were back in the ER on Thursday.  Yes, we were there last Saturday as well.  Last time it was a swelling and seemingly painful arm that led us to the ER. This time it was a swollen right foot.  She woke up Thursday morning and was pretty much screaming and crying in pain.  Her foot looked odd.  It's the same one that had been in the splint up until Monday.  She has had her foot flexed up and also externally rotated.  It is not normal.  She never used to hold her foot like this.  It wasn't right.  She woke up before 6am, so I got myself ready quickly so that I could star giving her all her meds earlier.  The idea was that by the time the nurse arrived at 8am, we could be off to the hospital as quickly as possible.

Our time in the ER was not nearly as long as it had been on Saturday, thank God.  They x-rayed her foot.  The good news {eventually} was that there is nothing wrong with her foot.  It is such an effort to bring her out of the house these days.  Not that you want there to be anything wrong, but it makes me feel horrible to put her through all of that for nothing.  Of course, she can't communicate except through crying, so there was no way to know that there was no new fracture.

We are living in a heightened state of concern for Peyton, so I feel a little like the boy who cried wolf.  Of course, we have to go through this because we would have no way of knowing for sure what is or is not going on except by bringing her to the ER.  It's just so frustrating that this is how it is.

In other news, it seems that neither Peyton or myself are sleeping much at all these days.  I am in her room and I'm having to jump up constantly to suction her, or when her monitor starts alarming, or to give her pain meds.  I'm so tired right  now.  I feel like I can barely function.  I don't do well with resting.  I try to take naps sometimes, but I cannot shut my brain off.  It keeps going, which makes it very difficult to rest.  We've talked about this before, but Ron mentioned again yesterday that maybe it's not such a ridiculous idea to have me on a "night shift" type of schedule.  We have a nurse usually from 8a-8p, so the thought is that somehow I will sleep from shortly after the nurse arrives until mid afternoon {hopefully!}, then get up in time to get Moira off the bus after school.  Then I would basically stay up through the night, doing housework and whatever else I'd normally do during the day, get Moira ready for school in the morning and off on the bus just before the nurse arrives.  We decided we'd give this a try yesterday afternoon.  Too late to get a full day's sleep after what was a horrible night the night before, but after dinner I slept basically between 8:30p and 1:30a.  I probably woke up briefly a couple times in there, but that's probably no worse than my usual night's sleep.  I've been up since then.  It took me a few minutes or so to adjust to being awake, but I got up and went about my business.  It's now just after 4a and I've managed to get a third load of laundry in already.  Peyton has had to be changed twice.  She's been awake nearly as long as I have been, which seems to be a new nighttime trend for her.

We'll see how this new schedule goes.  Weekends will be a little different since we go out to church on Sundays.  It's also Moira's birthday Sunday, so I can't really sleep all day then, can I?!

Anyway, we could use some serious prayers here for rest and sleep - for both Peyton and myself.  Neither of us is doing well in those areas.  It makes it difficult to do things like eat properly or think about meals or anything else I should be thinking of under ordinary circumstances.  I am hoping that I can get back to some sense of feeling normal despite being on an abnormal schedule.