Nightmare scenario · 5:13pm Mar 31st, 2017
Baby Wubs has proven not to be the greatest little passenger on car trips, so while we did what we could to keep him calm during the drive out to Whinny City last night, we accepted that a certain amount of crying would be unavoidable.
Then we stopped for gas about halfway there and realized something was legitimately wrong. Cat tongues are supposed to be all rough and sandpaper-y; baby tongues aren't. He wouldn't nurse, and he was worked up but not sweating. He's also had some diarrhea in recent days, and as we thought back over the day, we realized that there was a long stretch in the middle of the day when he hadn't had a bottle, even though he did earlier and later in the day.
This is called dehydration, folks. In grown ups or even older kids, it's not too hard to deal with or prevent; just keep drinking, or get some Gatorade or Pedialite, or whatever. The point is that you can tell someone they need to do something and they'll do it because you can reason with them that it's necessary. But with babies you have to get on it fast and with medical intervention.
We went to the emergency room in whatever random place we were at. We spent hours and hours getting him stabilized, but thank God he came out OK. We ended up turning back in the middle of the night, and got back home after 3 AM. Crazy people that we are, we were thinking we might be able to still drive back out this morning if he was doing all right. But he's not. He wouldn't keep anything down, and he was back to the sallow-eyed look he had at the worst of it last night. So back to the ER we go.
Look, thanks to the miracles of modern medical facilities, I have every reasonable confidence that he'll be all right in the end. I'm feeling a big gamut of emotions here, because it really sucks seeing your kids suffer. I also feel really foolish, because we tried to go, and because I had committed to doing the panel and now that's entirely up in the air depending on whether or not they can do a Skype option for me. Then, yeah, there's obviously the fact that going to a con and spending your weekend in the hospital are at polar opposites of the good versus suck scale.
I don't really know how to end this. Just wanted to let you guys know.
EDIT: In the grand scheme of things this isn't terrible, I know. The "nightmare scenario" title was some kind of low-sleep-addled brain fart joke riff on To Serve In Hell. I dunno.
I hope things work out.
My thoughts are with you. Best wishes for the kid.
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4478644 Thank you guys. We're back home from the hospital again at least for now.