When we we’re last with our swashbuckling hero’s they had just arrived home from an extended stay in the hospital. They had battled brain surgeries and nasty flu bugs. Mira was doing better, Erika was doing worse and Pat appeared to be unscathed from the whole debacle (aside from some stress and sleep loss). Grandma Cheryl was happy to be here and involved with everything (maybe a little tired) but just happy to be able to help!

This was as of Tuesday evening (December 9th).

Wednesday promised to be some return to normal. I awoke and headed into the office as I normally would. Erika got up and watched some Noggin with Mira (as they sometimes do). And grandma Cheryl had some of Erika’s delicious coffee and prepared to head back to Muskegon after giving us some well needed help.

Mira appeared to get right back to business and began demanding every drink she had missed for the past 10 days at the hospital. “How bout…. Lemonade! How bout…. Nuk (milk)! How bout…. Juice! How bout…. water!” And of course she would take two sips, set it down and promptly ask for something else 5 minutes later.

Grandma headed back to Muskegon in the AM, to leave Erika with Mira’s contant beverage requests. I was happily working downtown at an off-site managers meeting that would last all day. Poor Erika had developed the full effects of Mira’s flu like symptoms and began to struggle with trips to the bathroom and fulfilling the demanding requests of a 2 year old who had been stuck in a hospital for close to 10 days.

At 3:30 my cell phone rang, “I don’t know how busy you are, but I’m too sick to keep doing this. Mira wants something and I don’t know what it is.” I can hear Mira just wailing in the background and you could just feel the exhaustion in Erika’s voice.

“I’m leaving right now, I’ll be there in 30 minutes” I pulled into the driveway 25 minutes later. Sure enough, Erika was sick as all get out and Mira was screaming in the living room.

After that Mira switched to food and began asking for everything under the sun. Yup, it was like she was tasting every food she had ever had again for the first time. She would eat just a little of this and then a little of that.

Thursday I worked from home to ensure that I could be there to help out if needed. The day went by pretty quickly and Mira mostly laid around and watched TV. It was like she regressed as opposed to got better. She took her nap early and slept late. She ate very little food and drank very little also. We were getting worried when she went to bed. As she just looked up at me from the couch and said “Night, night” This was around 6:30 (way early for her bedtime and after having just a small drink of milk). We took her up and put her right to bed.

I’ve gotta be honest with you, we were both worried about her. I’m not sure why, probably because she seemed so tired and hadn’t really taken in very much food or liquid during the day. Erika and I went up and checked on her every half hour (which we never do).

We decided that we would take her to bed with us around 10 and offer her some more to drink. We no sooner got her into our bed than she threw up the little milk that she had tken in at dinner. 2 calls to the doctor later, we were heading back to the local ER. Our thoughts were that she would probably just need some fluid and we’d be on our way.

We arrived at 11PM and eventually got to a doctor. He wanted to take a blood sample and give Mira some IV fluids. The only problem was that two different nurses couldn’t get an IV started. It was a 20 minute process and for the first time in my life, I had to sit down or I would have fainted. No joke, I grew up on a farm and I’ve seen some traumatic things in my day. But after watching this nurse stick a needle in and out of my daughter arms for just the first 5 minutes was enough to send me over the edge. I kept suggesting that they use her ankle (where you could see good veins). They eventually did (which got the IV started), but even that took forever.

I’m not big on throwing stones at people spending their days keeping people alive, but cmon! I was pretty upset about the whole thing. Erika and I kept thinking that her veins were low because she was dehydrated (but the blood tests came back that she wasn’t). We still got her some fluids and she seemed to pep up right away. The nurse came in and said that she needed a urine sample from Mira and suggested a catheter. I’ve gotta tell you that at this point I would rather see the nurse get a catheter than Mira. You can probably guess that Mira went home shortly after this without the catheter.

She was asleep by 2:30AM, then back up at 7:30. More to come…