amusing stuff

Alrighty, so this entry should have any miscellaneous memories and/or funny stuff that happened, that I don't want to forget, to help tie up my posting about Emma's hospital stay.

We arrived Monday night and went to the ER.  It's a big city hospital that we went to, and it was PACKED full of people & lots of sick children.  I was almost afraid to walk in for fear of her catching something.  Luckily when I checked in and told them that Emma was immune compromised & that the doctor told us to come, they immediately gave her a private room, a face mask, and a sign on the door that told the medical peeps to wear a mask and gloves:

Emma had testing done, and it was determined she was going to be admitted to the hospital, but it took them a while to get us our room.  While we waited, they ran a bag of IV antibiotics.  Ella ended up falling asleep, so I laid her down on the bed by Emma while she watched TV:

The room was quite small and cramped.  We had chairs to sit in, and we had silly shows on TV to watch.  Kyrie and I were both hungry, but we weren't really in a place at the hospital where we could walk around and look for a vending machine (don't want the germ exposure).  So, we mostly starved.

We waited...and waited...and waited...I think we arrived at 9-10 pm at the hospital.  We finally moved to a different room around 4-5am.  We waited for a long time!  It was a long time of being hungry!  Luckily Kyrie had a few snacks, but it wasn't quite enough to feed the masses...or just the two of us.

What did we do the whole time?  A couple times we called the nurse by accident.  Finally realized Emma was accidentally doing it.  Then, besides being goofy and saying really dumb, pointless things and laughing hysterically about everything, we also had an "ugly face" with my sister to see who can make the best ugly faces.  This was my sister's idea.  I got a message on FB from her, asking me if I wanted to text ugly faces back and forth.  So, from 1:30am to 3:30 am, that's what we did.  It made me laugh pretty hard the crazy faces she made.  Kyrie did it too with her, but I don't have those photos

Ani texted me this:

I responded with:

Back to her (LOVE this):

Now me:

Her:

Me:

Her:

Me:

Her:

How?!  How did she do that?  It cracked me up so much.

Me:

Her:

Me:

her:

Me:

Ani:

Me:

Ani:

Me:

Her:

Just in case any of you had the misconception that I was mature..now you know.  It was a fun way to pass the time.  What are sisters for other than to act like a complete idiot with?  Thank you, Ani!  You helped pass the time in a very amusing way.  I LOVE YOU!

Finally we were transported to our room at about 4-5am.  By then I was pretty tired.  I was beginning to cross over into the dreams/reality mixing into one.  I couldn't guarantee that I was actually awake at all moments, including when the nurses were talking to me.

One of the things we noticed fairly quickly in the room was this sign.  It was hanging on the wall in a very visible place, as a good reminder for us all.  Take a moment and give it a good look over:

"Scrub the hug and let it dry!!"  

What?  It did not make any sense to us at all.  I figured I just needed to get some sleep, and I'd understand it better after that.  But before I could do that, we had to get checked in to this department.  Part of doing that was having to answer a LOT of questions about Emma to the nurse as she typed in my answers onto the computer.  

I won't go through all of it, but my state of mind was one of being halfway asleep.  She'd ask questions, and things just didn't make sense like they usually do.  I'd answer a question, and I'd totally forget what I had just said.  Absolutely no ability to recall it.  Kyrie offered to answer the questions for me.  She said she could make up some answers that would sound better than the ones I was giving...haha.

One of the questions the nurse asked was something about Emma's walking.  I told the nurse that Emma was getting out of breath while walking, was weaker, and that she felt weird.  I was trying to recall how Emma described it to me.  I said, "She told me that she felt...jiggly...when she walked."  I thought for a second, realizing that didn't sound right.  So, I tried correcting myself, "Not jiggly.  She felt wiggly when she walked."  No, still not right.  I could not for the life of me get my brain to work.  Then suddenly the word came, and I yelled "Wobbly!  She felt wobbly!"  The nurse smiled and Kyrie burst out laughing really hard.  

Then we were going on a little more.  They wanted to know if Emma had ever been around cigarette smoke, lead paint, black animals - I said, "Did you just say black animals?" while thinking, why does it matter what color the animal is?  She was really nice and didn't look at me like I was crazy.  She said, "No, just animals.  Is she around animals?"  I asked her if fish count.  They didn't.  Kyrie was laughing a lot.  I think it was at that point that I told Kyrie to go ahead and make up the answers for the rest of the questions because I wasn't doing any better than she would.

We went to bed.  Two hours later I was up again for the day.  I was pretty tired.  In hopes of preventing Kyrie from ending up overly exhausted and of no help, she went home for a few hours that day to get some sleep and then came back.  Ella was super sick that day.  She was also exhausted from not sleeping well the night before.  I almost took her to the ER because I was quite concerned about her.  This is what she looked like most of that day:

She had a really bad cough, a fever, and couldn't open her eyes all the way because they were drooping so much.  I think it's because she got half the sleep she needed the night before and was overtired and had a hard time napping as restfully as needed so she was perma-exhausted.  That was a really hard day, especially since I had only had two hours of sleep & trying to deal with such a needy baby and help Emma when she needed it.  I did manage to eat a full meal and take a short nap when Ella was taking a nap, and that helped a ton.  Oh, and our room was so hot.  I finally got them to cool it off by about 10 degrees.  Life got a lot easier after that.  :)  I had been feeling a bit overwhelmed until that point.

Kyrie, am I missing anything?  We never did really figure out what "Scrub the hub and let it dry!!" meant exactly.  We stood and pondered it several times.  We assume it has to do with germs, but...a hub?  We want to make our own, awesome, random, pointless sign too.

Oh, I just remembered another thing.  When Emma's IV bag would empty, the IV machine would start beeping...and beeping...and beeping.  Kyrie had discovered the "silent" button on it.  So, when it would go off, she would take her laptop, turn on some type of theme background music, jump up, hit the silence button (while being really dramatic) then come sit back down and turn off her music and continue about her normal activity.  It was much funnier in person than I probably made it sound.  She's a whole 16 years old now, and she's completely insane.

Here's a few more "ugly faces" texts that I had with a couple of my sisters:

Ani:

ME:  I was trying really hard to make my neck look weird.

Ani:

Me;

Ani being Capt Hook:

Me:

Then one of my older sisters texted me to check in and soon we were doing this:

Leslie:

Me:

 Leslie:

Me:

This probably isn't very funny to other people, but sitting there trying to make a horrible/funny face was the cause of much laughter.  Especially with Kyrie right there, who could watch me trying to pose and take a picture of myself.  She had her own series of ugly face texts that she did, and I'd hear her burst out laughing as she was trying to make a horrible ugly face.  It might not sound like it, but it's really fun & funny.  If you're in a stressful situation, just text your sister/brother an ugly face and see if they can beat it.  

This is Ella the day after her really bad day.  She was having fun climbing all over me:

Anyway, I must say that at times like these, you realize how important other people are.  I couldn't respond to most of the people that reached out to us, due to lack of time, but feeling their care and concern and their desires to help was very heart warming, encouraging, and strengthening.  So, just know if you ever wonder if you should reach out to someone going through a bit of a hard time - do it.  If they don't respond, odds are they are too busy to do so, but I know they appreciate it greatly.  I just want to make sure to thank all of you who took time to send us a note and encourage us.

And, Kyrie!  Thank you for coming.  Having your help was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stressful time.  Thanks for being so goofy and being so fun to laugh and be stupid with.  Emma and Ella loved it too.  

Okay, so now I think I've got the whole experience written out...

Thanks again, everyone!