Mama Bear Emerges

When my day starts off by answering a phone call that I think is one of the nurses and it turns out to be my battered son pleading for me to bring him home, the gloves come off.

I exchanged words (all PG, I promise) with a doctor today because she didn't appreciate me pushing with questions to try and determine which pieces of information I'm being given are correct. When I'm being told my son can't be discharged because he isn't using his breathing exerciser (to help prevent pneumonia), but his nurse informed me she took it away because he's still on sinus restriction, we clearly have a communication breakdown. And, when said doctor takes on an unfriendly tone and declares "I'm doing the best I can!" all I can do is tell her "So am I." Please don't get me wrong...the doctors and nurses at this hospital have been incredible, however, I am there to advocate for my son and that's exactly what I'm going to do. Egos be damned.

I arrived armed with a giant Jamba Juice, a Pendleton Sherpa blanket, and Tristan's cell phone. He was in quite a bit of pain when I arrived (around 9:45 a.m. - woot!), so watching him snuggle up in the blanket and go to work on his smoothie made the vice grip on my heart loosen ever so slightly. Multiple times throughout the day he pleaded with me to take him home. "Please do whatever it takes" he kept saying. There's no way I can describe to you what leaving the hospital without him tonight did to me.

The silver lining, you ask? While Tristan (and Corbin and Jon) get annoyed with me for being a pushy mom, there are times, like today, they realize moms are like this because it gets shit done. The doctor came back into the room later and told me that as long as the ophthalmology team signs off on his eye pain and orbital fracture, and his labs come back clear in the morning, he might be discharged tomorrow. Now how's that for a silver lining?

To all of you following his journey, we need you now. We need all the prayers, good juju, and shouts to the universe you can muster tonight. We need his bilirubin levels to indicate the jaundice is improving and we need his white blood cell count to come back down. If those two things happen, our sweet broken boy will be home tomorrow and we'll be able to give him all the loving care and support he needs to heal. The doctors and nurses have done their part - and they did it well - but now it's our turn. And we're ready.