First day of school....not.

A week later than most "normal" families, we were scheduled to begin our classroom work today. But we are not normal, are we? Nope. So, instead of eating breakfast and meandering our way in a nice straight line to the classroom in our very detached garage, we overslept (my alarm did NOT go off!), raced through a shower, (fortunately) threw on some clothes that could be seen in public, made oatmeal (it's fast), and called everyone to breakfast. And then found Will on the sofa.

His bp was down, his heart rate was up, he was fatigued, and sick. And in a lovely mito crash. Erlene, the amazing friend, answered my call and came to substitute teach the first day of school while Will and I headed to the ER. Dr Teasley had called ahead to Mary Washington for us so we didn't have to explain everything when we got there. Or so we thought.

Let's just say that no one understands mitochondrial disease and leave it at that. They finally got an IV started, but then they put us in a room with at least nine recliners and four televisions...playing different stations...all competing for the loudest volume. Will, of course, prefers Mary Washington Hospital, because they have cable tv in their rooms and he gets to sit for hours watching Animal Planet and the History Channel. Unfortunately, they were competing with CNN and an entertainment news channel. Our personal DVD player recently died, so we were pretty much stuck. Not a great environment for my 13 yo son who has a compromised immune system and was in the same ER room with who knows what illnesses and watching television that really was not appropriate for him. I was a bit frustrated, to say the least.

On the other hand, they did recognize that they had no clue and allowed me to help them determine that he needed a second bag of fluids. His bp and heart rate did stablize, and he finally came back to life and got goofy. Yep, he's back.

Fortunately, home health is finally ready to roll. Myrtle will come live at our house tomorrow, and the nurse will arrive Wednesday morning to begin an infusion. I hope she likes kids and dogs, because she will get to spend lots of time here. These infusions take a while, so she is kinda stuck with us. And she gets to do it every week! :)

Hopefully Myrtle and her magic fluids will eliminate some of these lovely ER runs...and maybe we won't have to figure out how to replace our portable DVD player quite so quickly.