Saturday came and went with little change in Julia's condition. The doctor started her on a course of Phenobarbital, an anti-convulsant, at 10mL, twice a day. It was bright red and smelly. It must have been horrible to take because Julia visibly shuddered at the slightest mention of taking medication. She would yo-yo between feverish and cool. By the end of the night, it seemed like she was settling down a bit and she had a bit of energy to get up and walk around with her "machine friend", the IV pole. But she only managed to walk around for 20 minutes before feeling too tired to keep going. Where was my energetic little girl?
On Sunday, although she had a good night's sleep, when they came in to give her a sedative so that she would remain perfectly still for the CT scan, she was clingy and whiny and not herself at all. She asked to use the bathroom just after they gave her the sedative and she almost fell asleep on the toilet! It was so fast and she was completely asleep. We were a little annoyed as the time ticked by and they still weren�t ready for her to come down and I was worried that the sedative would wear off before they managed to get her in. Finally they gave us the green light to come down and, cradling her in my lap, they wheeled both of us down in a wheelchair. It was the strangest thing, that they were planning to bring her down in a chair and not in her bed or on a stretcher. So, I held her and was troubled by her feverish dead weight.
Outside the room where the scan would take place, we were waiting again because they still weren�t ready for us and I was getting rather irritated. Not as irritated as I was when Julia began to pee all over me, having lost bladder control since the sedative knocked her out so deeply. However, ever my daughter, even in deep sedation, she didn�t like the feeling of being wet and began to rouse a bit. We pounded on the door and they let us in and I stripped her pyjama bottoms and swaddled her in blankets that were there. The lab tech assured me that it would be no big deal if she wet the scan table too.
I couldn�t describe the pit in my stomach, watching the tech jostle Julia here and there, getting her perfectly aligned within the cross-hairs of the bright red laser lights. She was strapped to the table, in case she awoke and tried to sit up. I held her hand, stroked her fingers and pat her leg as they injected a vial of dye into her IV; the vivid colours rushing through her veins and blazing onto the computer screens behind the small pane of glass just beside her. I felt horrible. The CT machine spun and buzzed around her head, making small adjustments, clicking every once in awhile and always the red lights bisecting her small body. I could hear the tech and the neurologist keeping up a stream of chatter behind the glass, the light from the computer screen illuminating them in the dimness. I prayed, I think. And when they came out, the doctor told me that they could see nothing in the scan. Everything was as it should be.
I should have been more relieved, perhaps. But my little girl was still feverish, soaking the flannel of the blankets with sweat, even in the chilliness of that room. There were no answers, only more questions and, as I gathered her up in my arms once again, I wished I was on the verge of waking from this horrible nightmare.
Upon returning to our room, the doctor said that given the fact that she wasn�t quite her old �normal� self, and the sedative effects she was going to keep us until Monday. It was disappointing and I realized that I would have to call in to work again. Which I likely would have done anyway, but I wasn�t thinking so it hadn�t really occurred to me. I had a sub booked anyway but I wanted to make sure that all my ducks were in a row. But they took out Julia�s IV so that made a difference. It was funny, in a not ha-ha way, that a clear bag of saline could make a person appear so much more ill than without it.
By the time Julia awoke on Monday, she was anxious to leave and we were getting a very sick little roommate who needed our nurse�s attention more. She had charmed a number of nurses and, although she want back to her happy self, she was certainly looking much better.
We were worried about the clinginess, the see-sawing moods and irritability, the inability to walk straight and erratic balance issues, but we were so ready to leave, we nodded in all the right places so that we could pack up all of our stuff and not look back.
7:42 p.m. - 2006-04-01