Hopefully not an annual event…

I’ve decided that Mary Clare wants to be a doctor for Halloween. Last September and October, she was admitted to the hospital for 1-a UTI, and 2-heart catheterization and this year, last Wednesday, she decided to get a bacterial infection and drop her O2 stats for yet another overnighter in the hospital. I guess the pea in the pod costume didn’t cut it for her last year.

All things considered, she is a healthy baby (as healthy as a baby with a half of a heart can be, I imagine) and aside from 2 major open heart surgeries, has had very few doctor and hospital visits. When she does get sick, she does it all the way. All or nothing. Which I’m learning more and more everyday is how my husband and my girls approach life.

Personally, I feel that the wonderful nurse practitioner that saw her at our doctor’s office during night clinic overreacted just a wee bit. Sure, no one likes to see O2 stats drop in the low 70’s, but when they start in the low 80’s, the norm and below norm should alter. I took Mary Clare in because she was running a fever. I didn’t even bother to check it with a thermometer, I could just tell she was sick. (Mother’s intuition thing.) I don’t even think we have a thermometer, now that I mention it. She did have a 100 fever once the nurse checked. After Tylenol, and before the practitioner checked Mary Clare, she was feeling much better and fever had dropped. However, once her O2 stats read 71, it was all over, to the ER we headed, practically shoved out of the door by the nurses. Mary Clare had her rosy complexion, as usual, and wasn’t in any distress, obviously. But who am I to argue with a medical professional? We also stayed in contact with Dr. Forbus, Mary Clare’s cardiologist in Charleston. He seemed to think she was fine, just wanted a chest x-ray to rule out other possibilities. He was off but didn’t hesitate to answer his cell and talk to us and to the doctors here in Hartsville.

In the long run, I’m very glad that doctors are extremely cautious with her, my delicate heart baby girl. She ended up having a bacterial infection and nothing more. After a load of antibiotics, a night under a croup tent with oxygen for the both of us, IV fluids and lots of tests, we are home and she is fine. Overreactions are better than under reactions, I suppose. It was a long couple of days and she is back to her sweet self, plundering and rummaging through the house non-stop. She didn’t even skip a beat when Mimi and Bapa came to visit this weekend.

McCanless still has yet to decide what to be for Halloween. I imagine it will change at least 20 times before the big day. As for Mary Clare, I’m not taking the hint just yet. (Unless she springs another ER visit on me within the next couple of weeks. I’m praying that won’t happen.) Remember, I only have a couple of years of chubby bugs and pumpkins before she insists on dressing herself in glitter make-up, plastic heels and princess costumes.

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