Tube, take two

My last entry was posted Saturday at 2:25pm. I wrote about how calm everything has been with Roxanne, and how she had miraculously kept the same ND feeding tube that had been inserted in early December. (Doctors had warned that the tube might clog, or more likely, that the baby would pull it out.)

Fate thinks those kinds of posts are just SO funny. Just two hours later, at 4:30pm on Saturday, Roxanne rallied her dexterity and yanked that tube all the way out of her nose. That meant goodbye to a nice dinner and movie at home, hello emergency room at Children’s Hospital! Dan and I expected to be there with Roxy about 4-6 hours, a typical ER visit. But wait, it gets better! An ND tube has to be placed by a radiologist under a fluoroscope. No problem, we thought. They have radiologists and floroscopes. But that procedure can only be done by an attending physician, and only residents were there on Saturday night. Really.

Our only option? Roxanne was hooked up to an IV for hydration, and we had to stay overnight until the attending arrived the next morning. They moved us to an observation room, which is more like a hospital room than an ER exam room, with a crib for Roxy and one of those fold-out chairs for me. Dan and I agreed there wasn’t much point in both of us staying, so I spent the night, trying to catch catnaps in a noisy, cold, uncomfortable environment. I had forgotten what a joy it is to spend the night at a hospital.

Roxy and I were brought up to radiology around 8:30am the next day, but the doctor had trouble getting the tube into the right place in her duodenum, because the area was irritated. Roxanne was mightily displeased with being strapped down and having a tube put down her nose, I can tell you. We let her rest for a hour or so, and when the doctor checked again, the tube had worked its way into the right place. We finally walked out of there around noon on Sunday.

In the photo below, Roxanne displays the spoils of her handiwork. You can see the new tube is taped generously. I’m considering putting mittens on Roxanne so she can’t pull this one out. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!