No worse for the wear…

So, our simple Friday night date didn’t work out as we planned (Notice Trish’s pearls in last night’s picture?  We were actually going to take it up a notch for dinner, but I’m sure the ER team appreciated one of us dressing up a bit for the occasion.)  They let us out at 10pm–just in time for us to fall back seamlessly into the various kid pickups after the high school football game (Yeah, Chargers!–Big win!)

We’re so grateful for the ER team at Cottage.  Despite being repeat customers I don’t think we’ve ever had the same nurse or doctor, but they all take such special care of Rudy.  Once the intake nurse gets a sense of his history (the three-page packet we hand them when they start asking the intake questions gives them a quick understanding that this isn’t a typical patient), they get him into a room immediately and the docs listen very carefully and start making calls to the Team Rudy docs locally and at UCLA.  Can’t tell you how comforting this is as, with a complex history like Rudy’s, you just don’t want a new doc to come in and start making calls without knowing the big picture.

Rudy had a 10 minute focal motor seizure at Max’s hockey game and was pretty wiped out (as usual) and breathing really irregularly (more concerning), so Trish called me (I was coaching Livy’s soccer practice) and we decided to take him in.  His color wasn’t good and his lungs required lots of suctioning, so there was concern that he had perhaps aspirated some fluid into his lungs.  After some extensive breathing treatments, labs and a chest Xray, he fell fast asleep and the ER doc communicated with Dr. Dan (who doesn’t mind me calling on his cellphone when he’s on a weekend trip with his family–LOVE that), neurology and the fellows at UCLA.  The ER didn’t like the way his right lung looked and wanted to get a comparison chest Xray from his last visit at UCLA.  As that’s his bad side, there’s all kinds of stuff there from pleurodesis, etc, so we weren’t majorly concerned.  He was looking pretty good so they let us go home and we’ll follow up with neurology on Monday to see if the meds need to be adjusted.

He was a bit cranky every time anyone touched him, until he realized we were putting his clothes on him.  A big smile came out of nowhere and he waved and blew kisses to the nurses as we busted out of there.

Not the evening we planned on, but knowing of a couple heart families in our network are going through some incredible heartbreak right now, we’re grateful it was just a hiccup.  We’re also extremely grateful for the network of friends here in the community who jump in on the spot to help at times like this–finishing up soccer practice (Greg and Kara), running our kids to the places they need to get to (Lyn) and just caring so much about Rudy.

Big day ahead at the Bayou (the annual Rescue Mission benefit).  Gonna be awesome!  Stay tuned…

PS–Funny side note for heart parents–Out of instinct, we walked into the ER with a mental list of supplies we needed and immediately started working the RT for trache/breathing stuff.  Maybe it was the pearls, but the guy was way too easy a mark and we came home with about six months’ worth of supplies only to realize this morning that the trache is getting pulled in less than two weeks.  Contact us if you’re looking for something.  Some instincts are hard to suppress ;-).