My latest visit to the hospital, taking my daughter there with a fever.

[razelove]

So I notice a lot of opinions on here are about what the US should be doing, our government, so on and so forth. I'm setting out to write this while the experience is still fresh in my mind from last night.

My daughter started running a fever of 103, motrin didn't bring it down, and neither did a cold bath. She needed medical attention. Those of you with children out there know how terrifying it is to see them in distress and be able to do absolutely nothing about it.

When we got to the hospital there was an unmanned checkpoint with a ventilator, we walked through that to nurses with masks off until I said my daughter had a fever, then all the ppe came out. Masks, face shields, plastic over their scrubs, and gloves over their gloves.

The checkpoint looked like this, but completely vacant

They then rushed us back ahead of everyone else, wiping down everything we came near to get us in a room, there is a shortage of test kits. They couldn't test her for Covid unless we were admitted and quarantined first, which seems to be a paradox. So they ran a strep test, chest x-ray and flu test first.

Every doctor or nurse we saw had on full ppe, and took it off to throw away while leaving the room. After about 4 hours(little after midnight) we got the result of strep, antibiotic shot, and sent on our merry way.

Like the guy on the left, but face shield instead of goggles, and a plastic gown, no hoods.

I would like some input from anyone else in the medical field if this ppe approach is typical, and if the shortage of tests is a nationwide thing. I live in a fairly rural area, so I chalk it up to that, but on the same token a hospital in an area with higher population density would need many many more tests if they're going to institute a rigorous testing routine.

Anywho, this is my first take, of what I observed of the hospital ER last night. Last month they were barely using the masks when my other daughter had the croup. On a side note one of the nurses told me they were sharing the face shields as they didn't have enough of them.

Thank you for reading. Any input is welcome.

[midnightmoon05]

So glad she is okay and better after taking antibiotics. She will be okay.. keep her hydrated. And always healthy enough to stay away from hospitals. As a mom with two kids entering teen years, they have been blissed with good health...
I live in a very high density populated city... the epic center!
Few things I learned. My older sister felt ill last week, decided to go to city med or urgent care (they are all over the city)... not crowed/crazy/scary like the hospital, she was treated - was allergy.
In terms of hospitals, its awful here...
My nurse friend have been reassigned and not allowed to be tested... if they get sick, they stay home for two weeks, once they feel better they must get back to work. Its not an option. They have to sanitize all their gears, and reuse everything. Due to all the shortage with equitments as well as health professionals.
I know the feelings of helplessness and how your stomach sank with seeing your babies weak, sick, not eating... if there are every any questions, feel free...
I am also a school teacher, teaching first graders remotely... anytime, anything, I can be a help... I am here.
Take care,
C.

[razelove]

Thank you, and I may message you to take you up on the remote teaching, my oldest is going to be going into kindergarten next year.

Ask me to teach physics, algebra, calculus, chemistry, history, I'm on top of it. Making a curriculum for a soon to be 5 year old though, shit, I'm in the dark there. I've been helping my friends in Utah teach their kids geometry, algebra, and some simple calc for breaking down more complicated shapes, phonics though... beyond me lol

[midnightmoon05]

5 and 7 yr. olds?
need to know the program the 7 year old is using...
since both maybe in same school, use same program... then can go from there...
at lease, to keep them engaged... must set up a routine... up by 8am... etc.. have a schedule...
also have structure phyical activitties for both (of course you have to coach them)... as easy as taking a pair of rolled up socks, a bucket 10 feet away.. have them take turn throwing and tally scores...(teach tallys, count by 5s... etc...)
one major issue... these assignments requries a lot of ipad/computer time.. thats why i emphaiazes on physical activities...

[razelove]

Oh no, I have a newborn, 1 year old, and in 2 weeks a 5 year old, 4 right now. For my friend in Utah helping out a 14 year old, 12 year old, and 10 year old, they're focusing a lot more on farm work for the younger ones.

[Jean-Marie_Céline]

Well, where we live (northern Italy) but in our whole country overall, unless it's an emergency or Covid-related, MPs won't let you into an hospital.
My fiancée is a nurse and that's the standard procedure, now we are appointing "Covid-free" hospitals to deal with all other health cases.
By the way we both got Covid and we didn't get admitted to hospital care - we are home quarantined and dealing with the symptoms by ourselves.
I hope your daughter is feeling better and that you and all your loved ones are doing well.

[razelove]

Thank you, and I sincerely hope both of y'all pull through alright, especially with support from each other. On the bright side of things, once y'all are better you can resume a "normal" life, whatever that is right now heh

[Jean-Marie_Céline]

Thank you, we take care of each other and live day by day.
I wish you and your loved ones all the best!

[razelove]

Same to you Jean, and though it may sound callus, I hope the quarantine, and isolation have helped you and your fiance work out some of the problems you were having before.

I'm rooting for you guys.

[Jean-Marie_Céline]

Well, to be honest you are perfectly right. Since we have been confined at home, even while she kept working as a nurse before we both contracted the virus, we actually started fixing out a lot of issues we had.
Even now that we are sick we are ironically having a much better communication and relationship.
Guess that those hard times either make or break couples, and thankfully it's making us so much closer.

Thank you for your kind words and encouragements, we wholeheartedly appreciate them!

[SexyAshh]

Omg jean! Hope that you both get well very soon! Sorry to hear that y'all both got this, thats terrible! :(

[SexyAshh]

Wrong emoji🙈

********☹️

[Jean-Marie_Céline]

@SexyAshh thank you for your kind concern, as of now we are managing it the best way we can and taking care of each other.
I hope you and your loved ones are well and that everything is going alright for you!

[coffeewithcream]

Hope your daughter is fine.

Canada has something similar for hospitals as far as the procedure to enter the building. Signs outside hospital doors advise not to visit if you have a cold, etc. Inside the door a nurse in head-to-toe PPE asks a series of questions, if you have a cough, cold fever, or been around anyone with same, have you travelled out of the country in the last two weeks. Basically that.
I made a joke my girlfriend coughed that morning- she did, on Cheerios- and I was treated to a full court press of PPE wearing nurses, scrubs, gowns, face shields, etc, taking me away and putting me in an isolated area. I earned an chest X-ray over that little joke. There was no telling them, I'm kidding, sorry. It's not a thing to joke about, I learned.
A hospital in one distant community that has a beef processing plant must be overrun now as they had over 300 infections at that plant.
I spoke to a doctor at a major hospital in a nearby city about 3 weeks ago and he told me there were no covid cases in the hospital as of then, but they were ready, he said.
A lot could have changed in three weeks.

That's the situation in the Great White North. Some remote parts have infections they are dealing with.

[1truekhaleesi]

I'm so sorry that happened to your daughter. Fever of 103 is no joke and you were right to take her to the emergency room. I work in healthcare and they're actually taking less precautions than my hospital. My hospital requires us to wear N95s at all times. When we are about to go into a patients room we must put all gear on, even if they've tested negative. I'm glad my hospital is taking this seriously. I've been impressed with their response. This is how we slow down this pandemic. I took care of covid-19 patients and I don't feel great today so as an extra precaution, my work is making me stay home and I'm being monitored daily by my hospitals infection control.

[razelove]

Well that sounds good to go, beats the hell out of what you hear out of Italy and what not, get sick, keep going in. If the hospital sounds like it isn't doing everything it can it's because I'm in Louisiana and as a state we don't do all we can.

Unless it's cooking or drinking, then we are 110%

[Anonymous]

Well i have the same question as Poppy.

Here in the UK we have been under orders for along time now to stay away from hospitals and doctors etc if we have Corona symptoms, fever and or cough.

Im not sure that a Corona test is really necessary for someone who already has symptoms.

In your daughters case she has been tested for everything else, or a good starting point etc at least.

The point of testing would surely be for those who have had contact with your daughter so it could be established if they needed to be isolated or not.

It will become apparent over time if she has Corona herself, i dont exactly know what the treatment is but my understanding is that you sort of hide it out and get over it on your own unless you are really struggling and need help breathing from a ventilator etc, but that is not something which everyone needs.

[razelove]

From my understanding the treatment for Covid right now is pretty similar to treatment for, well, what my daughter has, which is strep. Load the person up with antibiotics, and there's an antiviral, I think it's called like hydrochloramide or something? Either way you can't do much about this virus except let it run its course, but you can try to stop the secondary infections which are most of what has killed people with pre-existing problems.

Regardless, she had a fever that was life-threateningly high, fever suppressant didn't help, and neither did a cold bath. If both of us needed to go into quarantine, or whatever, she needed medical attention, right then, that moment.

Let a fever like that run too long and you have a dead or retarded child, neither is acceptable to me, I took my guns off, strapped my girl into the car, told my wife if she didn't hear from me by morning that we were locked in, and went to the ER.

[Opinion Owner]

Well, i dont know what the rules are where you are but if you had done that here in the UK im pretty sure you would have been breaking the law.

We are in quarantine, the procedure here would have been to stay where you are and call 999 and ask for an ambulance.

[razelove]

Where I live isn't on google maps, waze, any of those, that wouldn't have gone so well.

[Apope16]

Yep. and now they are even letting doctors who had covid19 back earlier as long as they dont have symptoms and get fever checks... except the virus can be passed on asymptomatically.

I hope things work out okay for you. I dont know about your other symptoms but a fever is a pretty strong sign of a virus...103 is the exact temp for covid19. If feel that there are so little tests that they are refusing to test many who have covid19. I think because your daughter is younger they refused to test because she is an age group that is more likely to survive.

[arabgoddess]

What medical professions have to realise that people will have temperatures for all sort of reasons.. Doesn't mean you have the corona! They're over exaggerating it too much!

[razelove]

On the flip side of things, what's reacting too little? So many places closed voluntarily before any governor's orders because they didn't want to be a "spreader" No hospital wants that reputation either as they already have MRSA and what not that they're oh so popular for.

[purplepoppy]

You don't say her age but Why were you taking her to hospital in the first place? Isn't the advice to stay away from hospital unless directed to go there?

[razelove]

One, as much as I may worry about a virus I worry a lot more about a fever that can cook my kid's brain like an egg.

[musicbrain5]

A fever that high in a child is extremely serious. It can cause febrile tonic-clonic seizures or even death.

[razelove]

@musicbrain5 The doc said the same, and that even in lower temperatures seizures can occur when temperature rises that quickly and doesn't go down from motrin or a cold bath.

[SarahsSummer]

Sounds like the medical professionals at your hospital handed everything superbly and with proper caution.
i hope your daughter is feeling better.

[razelove]

I agree, they got my little girl better, and that's all that matters to me. I did the take more as how hospitals are now as opposed to only a couple weeks ago. Only what I saw, and hoping some people in the medical field could weigh in to fill in my vast ocean of ignorance lol

[SarahsSummer]

A good friend of mine is a nurse and has said the same types of thing that youv'e witnessed. She wears a full porotective gear and a ventilator and a clear mask over her face. She strips out of her work clothes at work after dealing with patients and then when she gets home fully strips out of her street clothes in the garage and then showers before seeing her husband. She actually had to work on the very first COVID-19 patient in our area and many more in the subsequent weeks. The first one made news headlines here though.

[razelove]

Thank you Sarah, one of my neighbors is a nurse, but I don't ask her about work, just let our girls play together and fix a bicycle or two, maybe help her husband with the home improvement projects he has going on as he isn't well versed with the tools. I can see it's stressful on him being out of work, and she has bags under her eyes most of the time, probably from working doubles and what not, but again, not my place.

They're nice people, and good for my girls' state of mind when our kids play together. I hope your friend is alright, and that the PPE and decontamination protocols she's taking are keeping her from getting sick.

[SarahsSummer]

Me too! If you get a chance tell your neighbor you appreciate her efforts. In addition to my friend, my mom was a nurse and I know hearing peoples appreciation helps motivate them to keep doing the work they do. I send my friend little appreciative and inspirational memes/comments almost every other day.

[razelove]

I try to show it through actions. I have a big USMC tattoo down my arm, and honestly it's awkward as hell whenever people thank me for my service, or I get a discount somewhere, because other people I knew died during or after service. The words don't come so easy, and I'm sorry if that's too personal, but it's why it's tough for me to tell someone else I appreciate their service... because I don't like hearing it.

It's a whole lot easier to show it, like I said, helping her husband hang a bike rack with the right drill bit and screws into studs instead of thinking sheetrock will keep it up. Again, sorry if that's too much, but I just can't do the whole thank you for your service thing, I hate it.

[SarahsSummer]

Yeah, no I get it. I once met a Medal of Honor recipient and asked him how he feels about strangers saying thank you for your service and he suggested I instead say “never forget” seemingly as an homage to 9/11, that event was a call to service for many and that we’re all Americans. I've never asked another vet how he or she would feel about hearing that. So if I may ask you, your thoughts.

[razelove]

I think I'm very very lucky that I never got any combat medals. Everyone I know that got them says the same thing. Paraphrased down to you get them because things get fucked up. The intel is bad, somebody is just somewhere they aren't supposed to be, but the plan is gone, and now you're trying to just survive, and maybe, maybe get the mission accomplished if you do survive, because to not do so would be disobeying a direct order, and wasting the lives and limbs that were lost.

I knew one guy right when I was going into the Marines that got a silver star with valor, he had fought for days straight securing a foothold in fallujah the second time we invaded. We had known each other pretty well in ROTC being a year apart, but I didn't know the guy who came back. I had to stop him from shooting two people that night because they were dark skinned and he was convinced they were taliban.

Another friend of mine has a full out fruit salad (So many medals from so many countries it's overwhelming) He will straight up start beating down people who thank him for his service without buying a drink or something.

[razelove]

it isn't what they've seen or done, it's the people you knew and lost. I was just a supply clerk, that's all, no action jackson, but I saw some horrors at the naval hospital, and it brings great shame, because you couldn't be them. You couldn't take that round, couldn't stop their pain and suffering. You just watch them get shuffled off to the VA with a monthly check, and close to a death sentence because the VA is like thunderdome, 2 man enter, 1 man leave.

I would say the person you met is on point, never forget. Never forget the sacrifices, and never forget that we accomplished next to nothing with them since the 60's. We're trained to kill, to push and keep pushing. Then get told not to engage unless a rocket actually impacts, if they're fired at you, well, that's ok, if an IED goes off, shit happens, but ignore your indoctrination to win hearts and minds. It's all fucked up, either we should go to total war, special ops, or just stay the hell out.

That's just my opinion as a little supply clerk though. I had the option to go infantry and passed it because I didn't want to be the tip of the spear. I did combat media for a while as well, hearts and minds.

[SydneySentinel]

I'm not sure the exact procedures but it sounds accurate to me. Hope your daughter is feeling better.

[razelove]

Thank you, she's still running a slight fever, but much more back to her old self :)

[musicbrain5]

That is extremely typical protocol for this situation. Hope your daughter is recovering and receiving good care.

[razelove]

Thank you, we have a follow-up tomorrow, after the antibiotic shot her fever went down significantly.

[fantommaximus]

Thank you for your post.. Everyone understands what is happening today. And against the background of a viral infection and the hysteria surrounding it, people forget about those who produce it, about those who created this virus, and spread it all over the world. And most importantly, about those whose production orders for the creation of this virus have been completed in a few years! About those who, with the help of this virus, are trying to rule our World.

[razelove]

I've got to be honest, I don't know what you're talking about man.

Could you clarify and maybe simplify a little?

[Mijopapiii]

It sounds like your daughter is ok especially since they sent her home I am glad. Let me ask you a question though were there a lot of patients there who had covid-19?

[razelove]

I have no clue, we didn't see anyone after the checkpoint, they didn't take her temperature until we were in a room. I walked up and said I was there because she was running a fever (from a few feet away) and they masked/gloved up and pulled us back into a room, didn't even see the waiting area or anything else. I went with just me and my daughter because I thought there was a fair chance we'd be quarantined.

[Mijopapiii]

My friend had chest pains not long ago he went to urgent care they threw a mask on him immediately like they are treating everyone like they got the virus.

[razelove]

Yeah, the one thing I don't get about that is it would be great... if there were more tests. When we were at the hospital a couple weeks ago when my wife was giving birth things were a lot more lax, but for a fever they were just tossing people into tents, and then rooms in the hospital originally designed for detoxxing (There's a big opioid problem around here) No tests then, and it seems about the same now.

[razelove]

Hope your friend pulled through alright, chest pains never equal rainbows and unicorns.

[Mijopapiii]

he was ok thanks

[JustRollTheDice]

It's terrifying times right now and while strep sucks I'm glad your little one didn't have covid-19.

[razelove]

Ditto, you'd have been hearing back from me in 2-3 weeks lol. I went without my wife in case she did, so only one of us would get quarantined. We have 2 other daughters to worry about. Sigh, and now getting everyone strep tests, focus so much on a virus you forget kids just get sick regardless heh

[JustRollTheDice]

Yeah as one of three as well I'm glad there's a big age gap between myself and the siblings so I can help the parents because right now just coughing is serious. Keep safe and Goodluck with the rest of the tests and hope no one else in the house has strep. And yes they pick up bugs everywhere🙈

[razelove]

Thank you, and we'll try, my oldest is with my parents right now in case she doesn't have strep, it's the newborn I worry most about, I don't even know if they can take antibiotics, but my wife is making those appointments.

[LovingLoverReturned]

The most popular USA debates I've heard are on abortion on GAG.

Hmm where do you think she got strep throat from if the rest of family didn't get it? Maybe she touched something and put her hand to her face?
The important thing is she is alright. I don't think there is a way to allow kids to be kids without these things happening 🤔

[Prof_Don]

Your daughter will bounce back just fine, stay positive. 🙂

[razelove]

Thanks Don, I am, after it was just strep with the antibiotic shot, huge sigh of relief, now we all just have to make appointments, get tested, and maybe stockpile on antibiotics a little.

I was convinced that I'd pull up with her and get quarantined and was prepared for that eventuality, or breaking out since I know a little about security for hospital remodels and expansions.

Strange times we're living in where strep is good news, whew, just a flesh-eatting bacteria lol

[Prof_Don]

Make sure your daughter eats probiotic yogurt to restore the good stomach bacteria!

[KrakenAttackin]

Fuck, I 'm sorry you went through that and I hope your daughter is feeling better.

[razelove]

Yep, right as rain from the antibiotics, from everything I've read kids don't get hit from covid anyway, so I just have to play a wait and see game to know if I picked it up from the hospital with her.

[KrakenAttackin]

Good luck.

[Hispanic-Cool-Guy]

Wishing the best to your kid. I think she will be fine. 👍

[razelove]

Thanks man, me too, just icing down a teddy bear and giving her gatorade right now, poor kid, just being a kid right now is tougher :/

[MeatPuppet]

Ah, croup... Had that shit twice. Once when I was 3 and another when I was 4. Both times it happened at night and I still vividly remember how hard it was to breathe.

[MannMitAntworten]

Hospitals are ghost towns lately...

[razelove]

Yeah, there was only one other car in the ER parking lot when I went there, I'm thinking they were probably Covid as the car was there when I pulled up, and still there when I left.